FlagDay

Happy

2005-10-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

happy_swinging
Originally uploaded by A Little More Lime.

Well, So is now seven months old. I'm not sure how that happened so quickly, but it seems to be true. New developments occur almost daily, and we can hardly keep up. And honestly, between chasing him around during the day, and soothing him when he wakes up in grave teething pain at night, we can hardly keep upright.

Big new developments recently, for those of you who don't yet know:

He's crawling. Like a maniac, everywhere. He cannot yet get up the step, but he is trying.

He has developed the all-important ability to pick up small things between his thumb and forefinger. You don't realize how much you take this ability for granted in your everyday life, you people of the opposable thumbs. But for the first six months or so of his life, he could only pick up things in a fist; if that thing was, say, a Cheerio or a dead spider, he was then unable to convey it to his mouth because it was entirely enclosed in his fist. You see the woe this could cause. After much deliberate practice, which involved staring intently at his hands and willing them into a pincer, he has managed it. And this means he can now maneuver everything, no matter how small or unsavory, into his constantly hungry maw. Never before have I realized how many little things are on the average floor that you wouldn't want a baby to eat.

He has learned to pull up to standing position. He may be able to get into sitting position by himself; we think he can, but no one has ever actually seen him do it. But he can definitely stand up. He can pull up using any manner of object: coffee table, side of crib, my hair. This act of simply standing up fills him with such glee, such ecstatic joy, that he often loses his grip on his supporting object due to the next development...

He is learning to clap his hands as a sign of enthusiasm, pride at himself, and to fill in for letters in the song, "Bingo." Or for any other reason or no reason. This is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life--EVER. He stands up and frequently is so enamored of this seemingly simple act that he begins excitedly and spastically clapping his hands -- and loses his balance. Fortunately, like Lee Majors, he seems to have figured out to fall without getting hurt. His little body just rolls in the right way somehow, thus avoiding major head injury. For now.

He does also stand up and explore the things on top of the coffee table (for example), too. He doesn't always fall over. No, sometimes he manages to stay up and focused long enough to, say, tear up one of my magazines or tip over Teruaki's drink.

Finally, we suffered together his first illness. We don't know what it was; something viral, apparently, with a secondary and very minor ear infection. He had a raging fever for a few days, and obviously that sent me into a panic. But he's fine now. No worse for wear.

Those are the major developments. There are always other little things. He can say 'mama' but we're quite certain he doesn't yet know what it means. He cannot yet say 'papa' though, so bully for me. He loves to go on the baby swings at the park, as you can see in the picture (that's what he's doing there--swinging). He has two teeth now. He is fascinated by mirrors and by water faucets; he loves to turn them on and off and watch the water run. And for those of you who like statistics, at 6 months he was 23 pounds (10.5 kg, roughly) and 28.5 inches (71 cm, roughly). He's bigger now, but we haven't measured.

Teruaki and I are fine, too. Tired. But otherwise fine. Honestly this baby thing is the most fun time I've ever had. I kind of wish I was Mormon or something. I would just stay home and take care of babies and make jam all the day long. And stockpile peanut butter.

Hegel on the highway

2005-07-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

Thesis: 1992 Ford Aerostar mini-van (gray)

Antithesis: any Harley-Davidson

Synthesis: ??????
(Harley with a sidecar?)

I Love My Bib

2005-07-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

I Love My Bib
Originally uploaded by A Little More Lime.

Well, Soryu is now four months old. It seems like he is making huge leaps forward now, but huge. Some days it seems like he changed just overnight.

For one thing, he had started to display an unwavering interest in our food and drink. He would not only stare unblinkingly at our food and drink, he would produce much drool during our meal times and go the further dangerous step of trying to grab our steak knives. We decided to--pediatricians' recommendations be damned!--start him on cereal and the cup. The first day of solids, my books warned, be prepared for a fight; be prepared, they said, for him to eat only about a half teaspoon of cereal. Be prepared, they warned ominously, for a tightly clamped mouth and rejection of the new food and all the accoutrements.

We were prepared for all of this and more. We sat him in his swing (we lack a high chair), put a bib on, prepared the cereal, and handed him a spoon to play with. He got the idea immediately. He smiled. He gagged himself on his spoon--the back end of it, no less. I took a wee bit of awful looking cereal on my silicone-tipped spoon and held it near his mouth. He opened his mouth; I warily inserted the spoon. He swallowed the cereal. He smiled and squealed in delight. He proceeded to eat nearly a tablespoonful.

So far it has been like this every day. We feed him roughly a tablespoonful of cereal every afternoon, and he eats it and he seems to love it. Much smiling and squealing occurs. Much cereal goes on the face as he tries to feed himself. No indigestion or other negative effects seem to occur. We can't wait to move on to carrots.

And then lately, just for fun, we sometimes give him formula in a cup. Not a sippy cup. A real cup. The first time I did this, he saw the cup coming to his face and so eagerly launched his mouth at it that half the contents spilled down his t-shirt. But he's learning. He loves the cup and the spoon and all their implications.

Recently, his ability to reach out and grasp things like toys (or my hair...or my nose) has increased tenfold. Alright, perhaps not "tenfold"--I don't know how such a thing would be quantified. But now he has several toys he can not only reach out and grasp by himself, but also tote around endlessly. And also throw to the nasty floor of the local Wal-Mart, as he did with Mr. Turtle yesterday. He doesn't yet seem all that conscious of his throwing ability, but I think we have a budding shotputter here.

He continues to love music, especially my singing, and he loves any kind of rhythmic movement to music (e.g., "dancing"). He is also developing a keen interest in the oeuvre of Dr. Seuss. He likes other books, too, but particularly the Dr. Seuss. When I read, say, "The Cat in the Hat" he follows the action intently, kicking his legs vigorously as if to say, "Out with Thing One and Thing Two! Put that fish down!" He also, unfortunately, tries to turn the pages himself; 'unfortunately' because his fingers are usually wet and his idea of turning them is indeed to grasp them in his minute fist and pull. Thus, all our formerly pristine books are already showing the inevitable marks of use.

He continues to poop only once a day. Only once. And at relatively predictable times, too. It should be any minute now, which is why I am in here writing this and Teruaki is watching the baby.

He can sit unassisted, now, but that is not to say that he can get himself into a sitting position. If helped up, though, he can prop himself up on his hands like a tripod and sit by himself. He does need to be watched in this position, and carefully, because he still occasionally plummets forward without warning. And my parents have these tile--ceramic tile!!--floors. Just this morning, in fact, he collapsed forward before I could catch him; we are all thankful that we were on the bed at that point.

So also still loves to be outdoors. In the evening he can be seen with us on the couch, staring outside at the sunset; at that point, he almost unfailingly starts whining to be taken outdoors where the dogs they can lick him and the birds they can poop upon him. He loves to pick up tiny twigs now and taste them. Or dirt. Or dog hairs. Whatever. But outside is where it's at. I have to admit, this tendency of his is refreshing; it means that Teruaki and I often spend long evenings outside, petting the dogs and holding hands, enjoying both our child and the glorious New Mexico sunsets.

Let's go, mom

2005-06-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Let's go, mom
Originally uploaded by A Little More Lime.

Well, our baby is now three months old. Actually, just a little over. I'm not as precise as some other bloggers might be. (Note: this picture is actually a little old now--but I'm too lazy today to deal with uploading the new pictures. It all just happens too fast.)

Soryu is developing at an amazingly fast pace. He's just started grasping things that he wants. He now loves to snatch his bib or burp cloth or my shirt or fingers and put them in his mouth. He also has a few toys he can grasp, but honestly for now the bibs and burp cloths seem to be his favorite "toys". On days when he's feeling especially playful (I guess), he puts both of his fists up in front of his face, examines them, and then chooses a thumb to suck. Once he actually put his right thumb in his mouth, grimaced as if it tasted foul, spit it out, and then put his left thumb. So, apparently all that examination is important to ferret out the crucial distinctions between thumbs.

He is in a drooling stage. I have heard this will last until he's about a year old, to which I can only say, "Huh. That's a lot of spittle." He is showing other signs of being ready for solids, too: he is big, he can hold himself upright pretty well, and he exhibits an unswerving interest in our food. We usually eat with him near us, and he didn't pay much attention to our food before, but now he does. We have always held up little bits of things for him to smell, thinking that maybe if we started acclimatizing him to some of the stranger smelling things that we eat, he might not reject them later. It's a nice theory, isn't it? Anyway, now he tries to lick stuff that smells good when we hold it up. He went nuts on a piece of licorice candy the other day. We gave him a little watermelon juice to sip, too, and he seemed to love that.

Our little treasure has become quite a chatty boy as well. He babbles and babbles and squawks and squeals, and this is all enthusiastically encouraged by us. When he gets excited, he does it so loudly, it can be heard two or three rooms away, even with doors closed. He laughs sometimes now, too, and that is a joy. He especially loves being bounced on the bed or raised above our heads and then quickly lowered, and raised and lowered, etc., and those two little games always provoke major giggling. His giggle is a summer carnival, complete with funnel cakes and snow cones and the Tilt-a-Whirl.

Furthermore, and this is blowing our minds right now, he seems to have just figured out that if he squawks or smiles or babbles, we respond to that with a smile or a laugh. Having discovered that he has the ability to make us smile or laugh, he keeps trying this new-found power on for size.

While he still likes "Abbey Road", his favorite songs right now are those that I sing to him. He is particularly fond of my rendition of "We Love You, Conrad" from Bye-Bye Birdie. I don't say 'Conrad', though; I say 'Soryu'. He loves it. He's pretty fond of "Wonderful World" by the Herman's Hermits, too.

He has fallen into a consistent (and pretty convenient for his parents) sleeping pattern. He falls asleep usually about 10:30 at night, sleeps until about 7:00 a.m. After eating and playing a little bit, he falls back asleep and sleeps until 10:00 a.m. or so. He then takes three or four short catnaps during the day. We are very well-rested parents. We get a full night's sleep, and then in the morning while he is taking that long nap, we both exercise, shower, and eat breakfast. Outstanding.

At three months, this is a big, healthy, happy boy. We couldn't be more pleased.

I'll post again tomorrow, with a tale about our trip. I'll get new pictures up (at flickr.com) sometime soon.

Ciao, babes.
Julie

Yippeee!

2005-06-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight, as my beloved Teruaki sat in the rocking chair brushing his teeth, I danced around him, squealing in delight. Tomorrow, we embark on our road trip. The van is loaded down with all manner of supplies--gallons and gallons of water, Pedialyte (just in case!), a case of diapers, a tent and other camping gear, and of course lots of CDs to ensure our listening pleasure throughout the Rocky Mountain West. We look as if we might be embarking on a Himalayan expedition for all the gear we have. Tomorrow, we shall lunch in Santa Fe. Tomorrow, we shall drive as far as another state.

Yes, tomorrow we leave.

More from Missoula....

two bad dogs

2005-05-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

two bad dogs
Originally uploaded by A Little More Lime.

Well, I've been prompted, you might say, to give more information about these two bad dogs. I've also been asked to provide more recent pictures of Soryu, and those are coming, along with an update about his progress. So stay tuned. First, the dogs.

My family has always had dogs, for those of you who don't know. We had an Irish setter named Grover when I was wee and we still lived in Phoenix. We had a collie for a while whose name I don't remember. We had two dogs when I was in elementary school--Samson, a yellow lab, and Spunky, a somewhat ill-tempered mutt. Once we moved to Reserve, NM, we got Wonderdog, a mutt who was lost or abandoned or something. She was black and the best dog I've ever had or known. A little later we came into a really big (even for her breed) and good-natured yellow lab named Bo. The Wonder-and-Bo years are full of good memories; the Wonder-and-Bo years are legendary.

When we were living in Montana, Wonderdog succumbed to cancer. After a while, my parents were feeling ready to have a new companion for Bo, and along came Tess, the little white and brown dog in the photo. Tess is Australian shepherd and springer spaniel mix. Craig (my ex-husband)and I got her as a puppy as a gift for his parents, but they didn't want her, so we gave her to my parents. They didn't especially want her either, I guess, because Richard hates springer spaniels. But she was a really cuddly puppy, and my mom's a sucker, so they kept her.

Tess was, as I said, just a puppy and wont to harass Bo. Fortunately Bo didn't get angry much, even though Tess would sort of run along under Bo and jump up and try to hang by her teeth from Bo's jowels. Tess had a real penchant for chewing, as most puppies do, and chewed up everything she could, including the hot tub cover and the sprinkler system.

Eventually, sweet Bo also died. And in due time, my parents replaced Bo with a black lab puppy, so black they named her Shadow. Shadow, at about 2 years old, is still very much a puppy and chews on everything and frisks about constantly.

Tess is neurotic. Tess feels it is her duty to keep an eye on everything. She patrols the perimeter of my parents' lot. She corrals--or attempts to corral--the llamas (my parents have three llamas), and when the llamas are fighting, which is often, she goes crazy trying to break it up. If any of us are outside, Tess will stick right there with us except for periodically reconnoitering the lot and llama enclosure. If some of us are outside, but in different areas, Tess will run back and forth keeping an eye on each of us. Tess doesn't like strangers much and doesn't care for children. She's far too grown up to play with children. There are only two times she really relaxes: when we take her for a hike, thus relieving her of her many duties, and when she is getting much petting on the sofa. Otherwise, she has the weight of the world, seemingly, on her shoulders.

Tess also has a pink nose that gets sunburnt all the time in the strong New Mexico sun, and it looks like she is getting skin cancer there. She also has blue eyes flecked with brown spots. She's a good dog, actually, just a little tense.

Shadow could not be less like Tess. Shadow loves people of all ages and levels of acquaintance. Shadow is afraid of the llamas, although she tries not to show it around Tess. Shadow carries no weight on her shoulders and needs no prompting at all to relax. Shadow generally does not patrol or reconnoiter, unless she is being pressured by Tess. Shadow eats and naps. Granted, when Tess is trying to break up the llama fights, Shadow sometimes goes out there with Tess and puts on a reasonably good show like she cares--she runs around following Tess and barks a lot. But should the llamas actually turn her way, she's out of there lickety-split, while Tess doesn't seem to care if she gets trampled, and is anyway probably too fast to get trampled.

Tess is wiry and spry. Shadow is slightly pudgy and sort of "jounces along awkwardly".

They are both, actually, very fun dogs. But they get the "bad dog" label primarily because they still chew stuff up religiously. Both of them. Recently, they got under Richard's truck and chewed up some wires--enough wires that his truck would no longer run. And this is a new truck. They also don't mind at all, unless a treat is obviously forthcoming. But they have to see it in your hand.

Soryu is gradually getting used to the dogs, and they to him. Shadow licks him all up and down, and he doesn't seem to mind it. Tess just sort of sniffs at him and then runs off to her other chores. He needs to get considerably bigger before he can really play with them, especially since Shadow plays a little rough. And Tess doesn't really play, except in this eccentric manner that's not really much fun for very long. It's hard to explain. But at least Tess will be there to set a good example of maturity for Soryu. I'm sure he's going to need it.

Flickr

2005-05-31T13:19:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The summer of my life

2005-05-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

This morning a good friend called from Slovenija, a bastion of what looks like wonderful ice cream. He is also a sort of new father, his boy having been born in December. We talked, as I suppose new parents do, about how our lives have changed in ways that make it hard to relate to some of our childless friends. Babies take over your life, in good and bad ways, and that's all there is to it.

Shortly after talking to him, I was getting our stuff ready to go hiking, and the reality of how much my life has changed in a short time (since December) hit home. The "survival kit" I packed for today contains snacks, water, and a snakebite kit among other things. My "survival kit" for Japan had coins, a telephone card (in case my cell phone got nabbed), and maps of the metropolitan subway systems. My "purse" now--in fact, a huge diaper bag from Land's End, and not a purse--has a camera, a case or so of diapers, burp cloth, baby sunscreen, baby wipes, baby toys and books, and baby everything else--and no doubt we've forgotten something. My purse ante-mama had money, keys, and cell phone (and sometimes the "survival kit"). That's all I needed to be golden.

What am I to do with all my teeny-weeny handbags? They couldn't even hold one diaper, let alone the caterpillar that plays "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". I think I'll pack them away so I can open them up again someday and find the detritus of this other life--Japanese gum wrappers, little picture stickers, maybe a yen or two. And, after the kids are grown, I'll even use one now and then.

on the road again...

2005-05-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

I am absolutely ecstatic to report that I am yet again planning a marvelous road trip. Unlike my last great road trip, I will not be taking a cat along. This time, in place of the cat, I will have my two month old son. Whoopee! I like to start 'em young.

The raison d'etre for this road trip is...well, there are two of them. For one thing, Teruaki and I have birthdays only two days apart, and Teruaki hates buying gifts, so we have agreed that our collective birthday gift can be a trip each year. Last year's sucked, so now we have to make up for lost time. Also, the University of Montana (of which I am an alumnus) is having a philosophy symposium/philosophy department reunion. It's a great chance for us philosophy students to gather and see each other after all these years and do what we love best: drink beer and read papers. Not newspapers. Philosophical papers. Or something. The beer is key. Coffee generally plays some role as well.

So, we'll be driving the Aerostar (a '92 Aerostar, no less--I know how you envy me--it's even gray) to Missoula, via Santa Fe and Arches National Park. We'll hang out in Missoula for a few days, philosophize, see old friends, partake of liquid refreshment, avoid my ex-husband, and generally frolic in the lovely weather. On the way home, we have several detours planned. First, we're going to take in both Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I've been to Yellowstone before, and it's a favorite place of mine, so I want to show my husband (and son, although he will not remember it), and none of us has ever been to Grand Teton. (Sorry, Richard, for the plethora of National Parks and the dearth of National Forests on our itinerary--we'll hit some forests later.) Then we're going to go see Las Vegas, because it's famous and my husband's never been there, and Japanese people just can't stand passing something famous by without stopping. Then we'll see the Grand Canyon, and maybe even the ever-exciting Petrified Forest (yet more National Parks) and return home via Salinas National Park (or Monument, maybe?) to see Abo, Quarai and Gran Quivira, three ruins.

I'm all giddy. Road trips are just the best. I'm really secretly hoping to impress Teruaki with the things that truly make America great: bizarre roadside attractions. I am highly anticipating the dinosaur park near Ogden, UT, I've heard about. And maybe I'll get to show him some genuine vatos in northern New Mexico.

In Missoula and Las Vegas we'll have hotels, but otherwise we'll be camping out. We're bringing along a ton of baby crap, plus a ton of camping crap, including a few pieces of baby-camping crap. Fortunately, we have the Aerostar. It is kind of too bad we don't have a cat anymore.

I felt like a gringo

2005-05-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

What I should be doing right now is exercising, trying to take my mind off this with some fat-burning Pilates or something. But--ooh--I'm irked.

Whatever you people do with your lives, do not ever, but EVER!, marry a foreigner and then expect to live peaceably with them in this country (USA).

My husband (Japanese) and I are currently involved in the interminable green card process. I naively believed this would be a reasonably straightforward process. I am an American citizen, by birth, and, yes, I have the documentation. I lived in Japan for three years, and in that time I met, began living with, and got knocked up by a wonderful man who happens, alas, not to be an American citizen. We came back to the USA so that our son could have the many benefits of being close with his extended family; that was good for me in my childhood, and I wanted to give that to him, like a gift.

And now we find ourselves so vexed, so thoroughly outraged, by this process that we are thinking this was not a good decision. Our main complaint is that the government so thoroughly mistrusts its citizens; in fact, it has come to my attention since I've been back that mistrust is a running theme in American life. Forget the Constitution: you are guilty until proven innocent, and actually, even then you remain suspect.

Consider: while any two dinkums can marry and divorce freely in this country, if one of them is a foreigner, the marriage is automatically suspect. "Oh, because so many people get married just to get green cards!" So what? Let 'em. If they want to get to this country that badly, let 'em. If you don't, they may just as well come illegally and be granted amnesty in 20 years anyway; at least if they apply for the green card, they are attempting to abide by the law. Furthermore, does anyone have statistics on this? Just exactly how many marriages are demonstrably "faked" for green card status? I'm willing to wager those marriages are in the minority. Not just everyone would get married for such a reason, for one thing; I know I wouldn't have. For another thing, this green card deal ain't exactly a picnic.

Consider: we were told to bring an interpreter, and after we arrived with me (spouse of interviewee) as interpreter, we were told that spouses--or, indeed, anyone related to the interviewee--cannot be the interpreter. The reason for this, obviously, is that with my vested interest in my husband's performance in the interview, there is too much possibility that I would falsely translate his answers to better match my own or suit the interviewer's purpose. "But," the immigration officer said to me, "many people have sat there and lied to me, even when they said they wouldn't." I'm sure they have. Again, though, I'm willing to bet that many people have also sat there and told the whole truth, so help them God, so why don't they count in this equation? (Incidentally, if Teruaki were Mexican, an interpreter would have been provided for us, because all the immigration officers speak Spanish. This is blatant discrimination, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.)

Consider: Teruaki (my husband) has now been fingerprinted four or five times. Do they think he is faking his fingerprints? Or do they simply lack the computer systems that would allow them to see the fingerprints they took from him last time? OK, sure, he's not a citizen, but what is up with the fingerprinting?

Consider: we are asked to provide documentation proving we have a bona fide marriage. If you're married, ask yourself how you would prove this. Apparently, a joint checking account constitutes evidence of a real marriage, as does having both names on a vehicle title. I know I'm hopelessly idealistic, but it seems to me that neither of these has anything to do with a marriage's "real-ness". Would we be less married if we kept our money separate? I know couples who truly love each other, yet choose to keep separate accounts. Are they less married than someone who has been married four or five times yet has had a joint checking account with each spouse? And anyway, why should our marriage be suspect, simply because he is a foreigner? Is it the job of the government--of some immigration officer in El Paso, Texas--to decide when two people are "really" married and not just biding time until the greener grass comes along? Which immigration officer would believe that Ivana Trump married Donald because she really loved him? People get married for money or worse reasons all the time, but if one party is a foreigner, suddenly a third party gets to judge the worth of that relationship?

Some further mysteries: why do they bother, then, to swear us in? What meaning could it possibly have for a Japanese--or indeed any atheist--to swear to tell the truth, etc., "so help you God"? How can we provide the joint checking account evidence when he is not yet permitted to have a social security number (a SSN being necessary to get a bank account)? How can I be expected to provide my W-2 forms for the last three years (yes, they want them), when I was working in Japan for the past three years? How can I be expected to provide proof of current employment when I am not employed because I just had a baby (and, again, yes, I have the documentation, not to mention the scar, and the BABY)? Why did Teruaki have to be tested for syphilis? If he had had syphilis, would he have been denied a green card? Why aren't all people, including tourists, then tested for syphilis if it's such a concern? Why do they ask (once on paper, then later in the interview) questions such as "were you a Nazi? do you plan to commit espionage? have you ever solicited a prostitute? have you ever been a communist?"? Do they expect that people will answer "yes" to any of these? Why do they think it is their business if Teruaki had ever been a communist or a solicitor of prostitutes? Why bother asking a 24 year old Japanese man to swear that he was not a follower of Hitler? Why ask all these questions TWICE? To trip him up and get him to finally admit that, yes, he was in fact once arrested for treason?

Why, indeed, stay in this country? Why let my son be subject to this air of suspicion and paranoia? Why let myself? Because I'm caught in a trap, I can't walk out...because I want my son to have my extended family. There's the rub. There, indeed, is the rub.

Now, it is time to go bathe my son. Let's see if he poops in the sink again tonight. Fortunately, there is so much joy in life. If only there weren't the Homeland Security pricks.

10 things I miss about Japan

2005-04-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

Now that I am back in the U.S. I have started to miss certain things about Japan. I know I used to bitch righteously about Japan when I was living there, but I feel that is my right, nay, my duty. I think I would do the same no matter what country I was living in; that said, I always did have things that I loved about Japan, too, even when I was most angry at the Japanese public school teachers. I did start to take certain things for granted, though, and it is some of those things that I now miss most. So here are 10 things, not necessarily the only things, that I miss about Japan...

1. Osaka and its madness. I remember one time when I was getting into a serious anti-Japan funk, we decided to take a sort of spur-of-the-moment trip to Osaka. When we got there, as soon as the train doors opened, I got hit with the Osaka vibe, and my whole mood and perspective on life changed. There is nothing like Osaka. Japanese comedians are always either from Osaka or pretending that they are. The yakuza come from Osaka. In Osaka you can overhear people on the street having conversations about girls with "mysterious cream on [their] nipples" (sic). All Osaka people can--and will, for you--cook takoyaki. If we ever go back to live in Japan, we will live in the Osaka area.

2. Ramen. Yes, ramen. Not that instant crap. I mean the real stuff: fresh noodles and roast pork in big bowls of hot (real hot!) broth. I'm partial to the broths made from pork bones (Kyushu style) or miso (Hokkaido style), but soy sauce base is good too. We used to eat at this one ramen place called Marugen, and they had these condiments--nozawana (a type of leafy green) preserved in hot red chili, garlic both fresh and dried, and this special blend of 8 different chilis and spices. Food like that is a reason to exist.

Incidentally, we ate ramen in Hong Kong and China and never found any as good as what we had in Japan.

3. Festivals, but especially festivals devoted to flowers. I really miss the plum blossom festivals (at which they used to give out free stew and sake) and the cherry blossom viewing. I miss the parades of portable shrines, the people in yukata, the dancing, the festival-stall food. In Japan I missed Easter egg hunts and Halloween, too, though. I'm a holiday kind of gal.

4. The food, overall. I will probably not miss this so much any more once I live in a place where I can get Japanese food. But stuck here in Podunk, New Mexico, I have found myself waxing nostalgic over that damned sticky rice.

5. People walking. I miss public transportation somewhat as well, and that goes hand in hand with people walking. In Nagoya, we used to spend hours just walking around and watching the people, checking out the fashions or whatever. Where we are now, no one walks. Ever. It may in fact be punishable by law to walk somewhere, I'm not sure. It may count as vagrancy. But I miss the conviviality, the possibilities, the flow of being somewhere where people--like, lots of people--walk.

6. Izakayas. These are Japanese drinking and eating establishments. They tend to be loud and smoky. You get your drink, and usually a little tiny appetizer comes with the drink. Then you order a whole array of things to eat--you don't drink without eating--and most of the food is meant to complement your drinking. As an added bonus, much of it is healthy. Edamame (green soybeans, lightly boiled in salted water), goya champur (a stir-fry of egg, tofu, and Okinawan bitter gourd--the gourd supposedly cleans your blood), daikon salad, yakitori (grilled chicken, basically, but on skewers) and other typical izakaya fare are all good for you, so you don't have to be so hard on yourself for drinking beer. Plus, I miss the staff all yelling "welcome" at you when you come in. That doesn't only happen in izakayas, of course, but it seems to be louder and more vigorously shouted in izakayas.

7. Love hotels. First off, it's not what you're thinking. Many Japanese people live in very un-soundproofed houses or apartments with extended family, so many of the love hotel patrons are legitimate couples. Second, although the rooms do rent during the day by the 2-hour block, after 10 p.m. you get them for the night. What I love about these hotels, apart from the fact that they are often cheaper than other hotels, is that they tend to have some wacky theme. I am particularly partial to the Snowman's chain of love hotels, found throughout western Japan (Kansai). Each Snowman's hotel has its own theme--Planet Snowman's, with a Snowman-in-outer-space theme, is my special favorite, but Casablanca Snowman's is cool, too, with the hallways all done in vivid red with black polka dots. Also, love hotels always have awesome bathrooms--spacious showers (meant for two, no doubt) and huge bathtubs, sometimes with jets. The beds are comfy, the TVs are big, and they are well-soundproofed. Sounds like a groovy way to spend a night, eh? Love the love hotel.

8. TV shows that feature absolutely no violence, sex, nudity, sexual content or bad language. What? Have I turned into a puritan? No. But at the same time, there is just far too much of all of that on American TV. Honestly, it had been so long since I watched American TV that I didn't know. Nearly all of the above things feel totally gratuitous on TV, and I'm not sure what it says about people if they won't watch something in which people don't get killed and/or take off their clothes. Japanese TV shows are mostly about food. One of my favorites was about two fat guys and their menagerie of strange (and usually also fat) friends who set out each week to explore the regional specialties of a different place in Japan. These guys meet the fishermen who catch whatever fish it is and talk to them and go out on the boats with them. They have gone eel fishing, potato digging, tofu making, and clam baking. They do it all fearlessly and hilariously. Then they cook and they eat. It's funny and informative. Another show had two chefs who each made some really great meal, and then there were celebrities who had to vote which one looked better. The celebrities in the majority got to eat their chosen meal, while the ones who voted for the losing dish had to just sit and watch. They built up the suspense and drama by explaining where each super-expensive and very high quality ingredient came from: "this is miso made by hand from a miso shop in a dark alley of nowhere, where they make a hundred kinds of miso and have done so for six hundred years--we asked them specially which type of miso would best complement this hand-selected Kobe beef, and they suggested the extra aged 'Buddha on a Lotus Flower' miso..." and so forth. You could really get worked up listening to these guys talk about food.

I also miss seeing Beat Takeshi/Takeshi Kitano (the yakuza movie star/director) on TV all the damn time doing what he did before yakuza movies--comedy.

9. My students. I really miss a lot of those kids. For anyone who doesn't know, I taught in four public elementary schools, and I had students grades 3-6. And over the year-and-a-half that I was their teacher, I really grew to care about some of them.

10. The pride taken in appearance. I used to make fun all the time of the way certain segments of the Japanese populace dressed--there are some very odd fashion trends there, and it often seems that the girls there can't match colors to save their Hello Kitty cell phone straps. But the fact is most everyone there dresses (and does hair and makeup, etc.) to make a deliberate statement, to create a very specific image, and I find myself really missing that. It seems like everyone here is dressed in sweatsuits, or sweatpants with a T-shirt, and so if you show up just in jeans and non-T-shirt, people will ask you with doubt in their voice why you are so dressed up. That freaks me out. Um, I'm "dressed up" because I'm comfortable in this and trying to create the impression that I am not a lazy slob. We have seen a couple of people running around in slippers, even. They're slippers! They don't belong in the mall!

And now, a few things I don't miss about Japan--
The lack of respect shown to foreigners. J-pop. Hello Kitty and other cartoon characters plastered on everything. Grown women carrying stuffed animals. Being followed by masturbating men. The lack of decent Mexican food. The foreigners who think they know everything about Japan. The concreted riverbanks and coastline--just the concrete everywhere. The unburied power lines. The typhoons. Fermented squid and cod sperm--as food. The traffic and the unrelenting crowds. The expense of everything, including public television. Those high-pitched nasal voices all the salesgirls use. Being unable to buy clothes that fit properly because I'm 5'7" and have size 9 feet. Being mistaken for a Russian prostitute.

generic ranting: 7 reasons I'm glad to leave Japan

2004-10-13T02:35:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling surly, and I don't think anybody is still reading this anyway. So, here goes...

1. Everything costs an absurd amount of money. Yeah, you think that's true in every country, but that's until you live in Japan. Everyone who owns a TV is obligated to pay what amounts to about $15 a month to support the public television station, whether you watch it or not. Recently, our landlord came knocking on our door asking for about $40 (4000 yen) for something--I couldn't identify it, and she didn't explain. It turns out it's money, levied once a year, to pay for improvements and whatnot in our neighborhood. Excuse me, but if public television and improvements to my neighborhood are not covered in my taxes (over $100 a month is taken out of my paychecks, and that does not include the Japanese national retirement fund, which I don't pay; or my national health insurance, which is an additional $150 a month or so; or local taxes which amount to about $60 more a month), then what is? Nothing, apparently. Nearly all the roads that are the equivalent of interstates are toll roads, and the tolls are high. The toll to drive a vehicle on the interstate from here to Tokyo is roughly the same as the fare for the shinkansen (bullet train) for one person from here to Tokyo. Factor in gas, which is also fairly expensive here, and you have to have at least three people in your vehicle for it to make any kind of sense to drive. And, to make matters worse lately, pregnancy is not covered by national health insurance--complications are, but not normal pre-natal checkups. So, I'm paying the $150 a month for health insurance and paying nearly $100 a month for my prenatal checkups. It's getting more than a bit ridiculous. I have heard it said that you cannot leave your house without spending 5000 yen (about $50); but apparently, you cannot stay in your house for any less money, since these people will just come knocking on your door.

2. The weather.

3. The fact that the people here seem to be unable to walk properly. They shuffle and they clop. Why do I care? Well, if we're talking about a woman wearing $500 Gucci shoes and clip-clopping around in them, or worse doing the "these shoes are killing my feet so I walk only on the balls of my feet" shuffle, then it's purely for aesthetic reasons. I like shoes, but I like to see them worn by people who know how to wear them. Then there is also the noise factor. All that shuffling and clopping make for a lot of noise, particularly when there always seems to be so many people around. Even at my job (in public elementary schools), teachers wear slippers or something close to slippers inside, and they shuffle-shuffle-shuffle around school all day long. This can get really irritating when you're trying to get work done in the teachers' room at the end of the day. Just pick up your feet when you walk, fer the love of Mike.

4. The insistence that American sweets are too sweet. For one thing, most of the people I know who insist upon this have never actually been to America--they are basing this primarily on a stereotype. And these same people eat Kit-Kat bars and Oreos, apparently without objection. What I think the actual problem is that American sweets are not simply sweet; they have flavor. Taste a traditional Japanese sweet; it is tooth-achingly sweet, but without much actual flavor. The emphasis in Japanese sweets is primarily on appearance--this one looks remarkably like a tiny apricot, this one looks like Mount Fuji--but they are all made of the same basic ingredients (rice, beans, sugar) without additional flavors, except the ones that have green tea flavor. A few others do have some added flavor (e.g., chestnut, Japanese "plum" [it's an apricot, dang it!], yuzu), but they are the exception rather than the rule. Taste a Japanese version of a Western-style sweet; what is remarkable is not its lack of sweetness, but its lack of flavor. There is no vanilla, no cinnamon. In the chocolate cake, there is very little chocolate--darker, more strongly flavored chocolates are not so popular, although they can occasionally be found. The most popular Western cake here, the "strawberry shortcake", is a bland white cake (no vanilla, or at least little enough that I can't taste it), with strawberries and whipped cream that also has vanilla in it. It's sweet--maybe not Betty Crocker mix cake sweet--but sweet, but it has so little flavor. If the strawberries aren't at their absolute peak, then the whole thing is a wash.
I have come to believe that Japanese are just averse to strong flavors. In Japanese cooking, virtually everything is a little-to-a-lot sweet; there is sugar added (or at least mirin, which has sugar in it, contrary to what a lot of Japanese seem to believe) to everything--oden, nikujaga, sushi, the broth for soba and udon and the dip for tempura, you name it. Virtually everything in Japanese cooking, in addition to sugar/mirin, has the same basic run of flavors. They say "sa shi su se so" in Japanese--'sa' for sugar, 'shi' for salt, 'su' for vinegar, 'se' for soy sauce, and 'so' for miso. They really should add dashi, a fish stock that is used in virtually everything. If you have those six things and whatever fresh ingredients--meat, tofu, vegetables, rice--you can cook a Japanese meal. Yes, some things require a little ginger; occasionally, garlic will be called for, though not so very often; and roasted sesame oil and/or sesame seeds are also fairly common. But this does not add up to a lot of variety, really, despite the ability to combine. I hesitate to say that everything in Japan tastes the same, because that isn't quite true; but it does all taste remarkably similar, particularly to someone who is used to the varied spices offered up in Mexican cooking. When I cook for Japanese people, including my fiance, I have to be very careful; although his tastes are quite catholic (need I add, "for a Japanese person"?), he will complain about "herb tastes" and "grass tastes" and "strange odors". The "strange odors" comment is nearly always elicited by nutmeg, fennel, anise, or cloves. "Grass tastes" and "herb tastes" obviously overlap, but he has used those terms to describe things as varied as tarragon and jasmine. But almost never has he complained that sweets I have made--yes, even "American sweets"--have been too sweet. The problem is always in the flavors.

5. Narrowness. There is narrowness as a physical property, and there is narrowness as a mental property. While I am sometimes alarmed by the physical narrowness of Japanese streets, I am vastly more alarmed by the narrowness of thought and sympathy here. Perhaps the one influences the other; I don't know, but I have never heard it said of natives of Chile that they are narrow-minded or unsympathetic people, and their country is physically at least as narrow as Japan. Japanese have no sympathy for people--well, essentially for people they don't personally know, but especially for foreign people that they "can't understand". It's been pointed out before by others far more erudite than I am, and the lack of sympathy has been an ingredient in the Japanese foreign policy for, well, forever really. Japan will never accept refugees from Cambodia for this reason, and it is much for the same reason that they are not polite to strangers. The only people who matter to the Japanese sense of etiquette and mores (I would argue there are no real ethics here, only mores, but that is a subject for another day) are people who are known or are bound to become known. This seems regrettably narrow to me. Then there is the narrowness of thought that seems to render many Japanese unable of thinking of things that aren't done here. This ranges from the trivial--I was eating an intact apple (skin on, uncut, uncored) at lunch and shocked the whole staff because, I was informed, Japanese just don't eat apples that way and had never considered that the skin, too, might be edible--to the relatively important. The "relatively important" encompasses a whole range of ideas (or lack thereof) of government and business, and is part of why Japan cannot fully recover from this recession. The thinking here is decidedly in the box.

6. The attitude toward nature. Japanese are said to love and revere nature, and that was part of why I came here to begin with. While it may have been traditionally true that Japanese culture was respectful of nature, it certainly isn't anymore. Witness the replanting of native forests with monoculture Japanese cedar. This has not been a small-scale project; a large percentage of remaining forest is now cedar, planted according to the Japanese ideal in straight rows, all very uniform and controlled. This is a love of nature? Witness the burying of riverbeds and coastline beneath concrete. Witness the overwhelming lack of tree-lined streets in the cities, of wilderness anywhere, of hiking trails that haven't been paved. Yes, there are some of all of those things, but so few for a country that "loves" nature. And more: witness the overall attitude of Japanese people that nature is severe and threatening, a source of fear. The damage from typhoons and hurricanes and earthquakes in other countries is regularly much worse (although, granted, it's been bad this year), yet Japanese harbor an image of themselves and their country as suffering badly from the caprices of Mother Nature. They question me regularly about these things--does it get this hot in "your country"? does it get this cold in "your country"? do you have typhoons in "your country?" earthquakes? Nevermind that they can't remember what country I'm from; nevermind the impossibility of answering those questions intelligibly about a country as vast as America. What irks me is that they think that heat and cold and earthquakes are unique to Japan, and that if where you're from doesn't have earthquakes, then it must be pretty much free from natural disasters. How can I explain to them about forest fires, about flash floods, about hypothermia, about dust storms, about temperatures of 120 degrees? As long as it's not a typhoon--most of which do very little damage to Japan--then it's not real to them. In short, I find the Japanese attitude toward nature absurd. They treat it badly and severely fail to comprehend it--how can that be either love or respect?

7. That the people here tend to think all foreign countries (and, thus, all foreign people) are the same. I have actually heard people say this, so it's not simply an impression. One person said it directly to me. I'm not talking about thinking Canada and America are the same--I mean all foreign countries, or pretty close. They may make some distinction between all Asian countries outside of Japan and all non-Asian ones. Part of the problem, obviously, is that there aren't a lot of foreigners here, as a percentage of the population. Another part is that there is overall a distinct lack of emphasis on world history and world social studies. Ask sixth graders here what language is spoken in any non-Asian country, and the answer will always be English--nevermind if it's France, Mexico, Brazil, or Kenya. People--mostly kids, but not always--walk up to me a lot and say "hello" in Chinese--ni hao. I had no idea what they were saying until my fiance told me what it means. People sometimes ask me why I live where I do--why don't you live with the other foreigners, they ask. Well, nearly all of the other foreigners living in this city are Filipino and Brazilian workers at the Sony plant, and I speak neither Tagalog nor Portuguese, so I don't see what difference it would make to live close to them, as interesting as it might be to be friends with some of them. Unfortunately for many of my Canadian, British, and Australian colleagues (not to mention French, Polish, and so on), the general assumption is that all foreign countries are America. Thus, English teachers--despite their country of origin--are regularly asked to teach lessons about Halloween and Thanksgiving, neither of which is a major holiday in their home country, unless they are actually American. But similarly, Americans get asked all kinds of questions about Canada and England and other countries that we have no basis for answering. I simply don't know what kinds of fruits are popular in England; how would I? All I know about England I learned from Ken Loach, Martin Amis, and Mike Leigh, and fruits don't feature particularly heavily in the oeuvres of any of those gentlemen. Anyway, I'm not sure my English friends would like me to judge their country based on those guys.

Addendum, 5/3/2005: Boy, I was feeling surly. Obviously, Japan isn't all bad or I wouldn't have stayed there for three years, or miss it so much since I returned to America. But, still, there is some validity in the above, I think. And it is tempered by the next post--what I miss about Japan now. So take all the above with a grain of salt--or miso.

ah, yes, the blog

2004-09-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's taken so long to get this up. I am--rather, we are--safely back in Japan. I'm back at work and everything. The baby is getting big (must be like 5 cm by now) and seems to be healthy. I feel like my belly is already getting huge, although so far nobody else seems to be able to notice. I am craving beans of all sorts lately, so we're eating some kind of beans (refried, pork and, black bean soup, you name it) pretty much everyday, and I think Teruaki is getting a little tired of it, but otherwise we're all fine here.

Mitch--I'm glad you enjoyed the tales of woe. Looking back on it now, it doesn't seem so bad either, and someday we'll probably laugh about it too. Maybe. From the other tourists we've talked to, it really doesn't seem like our experiences are isolated to just us, though I am pretty sure I have "Major Sucker" tattooed somewhere where others can see it. I guess I essentially expect people to not blatantly lie--silly me--and they can see that coming a mile away, the liars that is. I guess in normal situations, though, I always feel like I have some recourse, some way to control it, but in Vietnam we both felt like there wasn't any way around it. I think ultimately it bothered me much more to just not feel like I was in control of whether or not I was being taken for a ride. You know how it is. Anyway, I know it isn't Teruaki's fault--he turned cynical (but in that Japanese "well, this can't be helped, so no reason to get upset" way of his) far earlier than I did. I kept thinking that surely this next person wouldn't lie--and a couple of them didn't. A couple of times my naive belief in honesty was vindicated.

Alright, so here's the rundown on our last few days of vacation. When I left you, we were on our way to Danang. Our first day in Danang, we walked to China Beach, and found it packed full of Asians--probably Vietnamese, though I think some were Thai, maybe--who were all staring at us like we were the creatures from the Black Lagoon, of course. We were in no mood for that, plus we were getting harassed by this motorcycle driver who wanted us to hop on and let him show us around. There are a lot of these types of motorcycle drivers around--most of them will take your first "no, thank you" as a negative and leave you alone. Some of them will just follow you around and continually interrupt your conversation to let you know how many services they could offer you. After a few "no, thank you"s, it really should be enough--or you can try just ignoring them, which is what Teruaki did. Anyway, this one guy just kept following us so that we couldn't actually have a conversation between ourselves for all the interruptions (and so we couldn't decide what hotel to stay at--near the beach or in town, etc.), so we finally fled into a car taxi and stayed far, far away from China Beach. That guy actually had the nerve to tell me I'm obviously a difficult woman and very unfriendly when I finally told him to get lost, after a half hour of "no, thank you". That's me, miss difficult. Pleh.

Anyway, the next day was one long intestinal cramp. I'm not speaking figuratively. Something we ate made both of us really, really ill. We did not leave the hotel. We barely left the bathroom. It was not a good day. The food in Danang is very dubious. Don't eat there.

The next day we were feeling good enough to leave the room for at least a little while, but we were not feeling good enough to ride the tourist bus for 16 hours back to Hanoi, so we went and bought plane tickets back to Hanoi. This was a situation in which we both thought we were going to get screwed again--we had failed to get a receipt, and of course it takes some time to print out the tickets--but we didn't. Quite happily, we actually received the tickets we paid for. Miracle. We also went to the museum of Cham sculpture, which is pretty interesting, but very hot. Very hot.

The next morning we flew back to Hanoi. There we spent some time taking care of the remains of the Danang intestinal disorder, then did some shopping. Being back in Hanoi was nice, actually. It felt known, after all that time on the road, because we had stayed there for so long at the beginning.

The next morning we flew to Guangzhou, China. We both felt absolutely certain that this day was going to be really rough, given our previous experience in China. Actually the roughest thing about it was the departure tax--excuse me, "passenger service charge"--at the Hanoi airport. US $14 per person to get on an international flight, payable right after check-in, in cash. We were unprepared for such a relatively vast expense (remember, $28 was enough for three nights of a double room in a hotel--it was our daily budget most days; I don't think folks would be happy if they got to the check-in counter at LAX and were told they suddenly needed to cough up $150 in cash, beyond the ticket price, to be able to get on their plane. Think about it.), so we had to cash some traveler's checks. I'm sure you know already I was thrilled by this whole thing. It gets better, though. We had to cash two $20 checks, but the bank at the airport takes a $2.20 commission. So, we're meant to get $37.80, right? Well, the banks don't keep American coins of course, so they give us the $.80 in dong. Dong must be the most worthless currency in the world, and anyway we're about to get on a flight out of the country and technically dong cannot be taken out of Vietnam. In other words, by taking that extra $.20 of commission, the bank ensures that you have actually handed an entire dollar back to beautiful Vietnam, because you cannot use or exchange that last little pile of dong. They may as well call it dung. What a beautiful morning that was.

But we got to China, and it was a China we had never set foot in before. Seriously, this was a new, modern airport. We had gone to the airport at Guangzhou when we went there before, but it was not the same airport. I'm not just making this up or seeing things differently after having been in Vietnam. It was not the same airport--at this airport there were even people who could speak really good English. They told us exactly where we needed to go to get on the bus to Hong Kong, exactly how to get there, and exactly how much it would cost. They were exactly correct about all of it. We took a bus to a lovely hotel from where the buses to Hong Kong depart. There was a McDonald's next door, so we availed ourselves of takeout. Back to normalcy, right there in China. It was totally surreal--this China could not have contrasted more with the China we had seen previously. These people were friendly and helpful, the restaurant was clean and bustling, the hotel was lavish. Rod Serling, where are you buddy? This ain't China. But it was. Cool.

Four hours on a bus back to Hong Kong, checked into another dubious guesthouse in the Mirador Mansions. I have a real affection for that place. You can really meet people there. All kinds of travelers converge there, along with immigrant workers from India and Pakistan and that area and Africa. I regret that after so long in Vietnam, though, we were treating everyone really warily. We had to pay a key deposit at the guesthouse, and I was treating this woman like there was no way she was ever going to give it back to me. I felt bad later when I realized what I was doing--she was above-board, just like everyone else we dealt with in Hong Kong. See, in Vietnam, they will try to tell you the watch you're buying is real; in Hong Kong, they are totally up front about it being fake. Key difference.

The next day, our last, we wandered about Hong Kong attempting to see some museums. The first one we went to is only open when there is actually an exhibition up--no permanent collection, it seems, and there wasn't anything the day we went. Bad luck. The next one, it turns out, is closed on Tuesdays. Yep, bad luck again. By that time we were so sweaty from the saturation humidity and all the hills (did you know Hong Kong is hilly? I didn't), that we just decided to (pardon the language) f#$% it and go see a movie. So we watched "The Bourne Supremacy". I think the title is a little overblown, and Matt Damon kind of bugs me, but anyway it was cool inside and they had good popcorn. Also, seeing a movie in Hong Kong is cheaper than seeing one in Japan.

The next day we flew home, or at least to Tokyo. Had a weird evening with the in-laws. Our cat was visibly happier at their house than at ours (big house, kitty door so she can go in and out at will, lots of people dumping constant affection on her), so we asked if they wanted to just keep her. We miss her, of course, but in the long run it is better for her and easier for us. And she is being well taken care of, which is what matters.

After that we just basically spent the last few days before I had to start work again relaxing and getting stuff organized and put away. A month is a long time to be gone, and there were a number of little chores waiting for us. Also, with the baby and all, we started doing serious research about our plan for the future. We came up with Plans A, B, and C. Plan A isn't going to work out, it seems. Plan B1 probably won't either, so now we're focusing on Plan B2. So far, that one is looking promising. I'll post more about it as I find new things out. I have this habit of just telling people what it is that I want to do, which is nearly everything, and then when I end up doing something totally different, they think I'm flighty and making decisions by the seat of my pants. Rest assured that we are making these decisions in light of what our research leads us to believe, that we are very serious about making good choices for our family, and that regardless of all the things I want to do, we are not just making these light-hearted decisions that change from day-to-day. And that's why I'm not telling anyone what Plan B2 is until we're 100% sure that that's what we're doing; if we change our minds due to new information, then we don't want to be accused of being flakey.

Work's the same. I haven't enjoyed it since March or so, but anyway it's the same. And I'm letting Teruaki persuade me that maybe if no one else cares, just maybe I shouldn't get so stressed out about it either. They can't possibly expect me to actually produce English-speaking students under these absurd conditions; so, why should I get so freaked out when I cannot? A maximum of 45 minutes in two weeks? Sorry, that ain't gonna cut it. Japanese always talk about the fact that European languages are related to English and Japanese isn't, so that's why Europeans can speak English so much better than Japanese. Lame. For one thing, Finnish isn't related at all to English. The problem is commitment. If you want to learn a language, it takes a time commitment and some discipline, and Japanese schools are willing to give neither of those to English instruction. And I have to stop seeing that as my problem.

Mostly now I can. I just do my yoga, eat my beans, and read my books and magazines about being pregnant. When you get down to it, there is nothing that matters as much for me right now as this second beating heart I have inside me. Nothing.

Take care. I will get caught up on personal emails soon. My YahooBB was down when we came back, and it took a few days to get it hooked up again. Miss you all.

Julie

pants on fire

2004-08-18T07:42:00.000-07:00

Today our "vacation" hit a new low. All along, you may have been getting the picture that we were not 100% enjoying this; now, we are thinking this may be one country we never come back to. So, first I'm going to post today's story, then go back and recount some of the other nasty little stories that I have been leaving out but that have been slowly eroding our pleasure in Vietnam.

Today we had planned to go to the Cham ruins near Hoi An. They are a World Heritage site and a popular tourist destination, but we didn't want to go with a regular tour bus and have so many people around that we couldn't enjoy ourselves. We found a tour company that had three options for seeing the ruins there--two were tour bus options, and the other was a "private tour". It said you go at "any time" and that "sunrise and sunset are highly recommended". We thought sunset sounded really cool, so we went to the tour company this morning and asked about it. For two people to go by private car it was $16 for about four hours--it's an hour each way there, plus two (give or take) among the ruins. Sunset here is about 6:00 pm or 6:30, so we asked for the car to come get us at 4:30. They booked the tour for us, took our $16, and told us to have a nice time. We left and did more clothes shopping--the tailors are a great bargain, and we're actually quite satisfied with the work they have done for us--and got back to our hotel to dump our stuff and wait for the car. It was about 3:55 pm when we got back to the hotel, and the desk clerk (who seems really nice) told us the tour company had called and asked if we could leave at 4:00 instead. We were a little confused, so she had the tour company call us in our room.

The tour company guy on the phone couldn't speak English so great, and I don't have nearly enough Vietnamese to explain that we wanted to leave at 4:30 specifically so we could see the sunset, so I just went over it again and again with him in very slow English. I was never made clear on why they were requesting we change to 4:00 instead, but anyway finally he agreed to 4:30, and we hung up. That should have been our first warning sign that maybe this company didn't have its doody together, but anyway we got in the car when it came at 4:30. And off we went...

Only to find that the ruins close at 4:30. You cannot enter after that time. So, yes, we rode for one hour in a car, got out, looked helplessly around at the vegetation (another victim of Agent Orange, I'm afraid), got back in the taxi and came back. You cannot see the ruins at all without entering the park, and you cannot enter the park after 4:30. Period, end of story. Now I ask you, should the tour company have known this? And if they did know it, shouldn't they have informed us of this when we booked the car and paid? Well, anyway, we thought so, so after returning we headed straight for the tour company.

Incidentally, this tour company is called Camel Travel. I'm sorry to say I cannot recommend these evil people. Avoid Camel Travel in Hoi An, Vietnam, like the plague.

So, we walked into the office and a guy asked if he could help us. The girl who originally booked the tour for us was not there, but we figured it was the same company, so they must have records (and we did have a receipt), and they ought to be able to straighten this out. The guy just kept saying that he's sorry, but the tour brochure is not his responsibility, and could we please come back in the morning to talk to the woman who booked us originally. I explained--and I actually did not lose my temper, for which Teruaki congratulated me afterward--that we had already wasted two hours in a car to nowhere and were currently wasting more time in his office, when what we really wanted to be doing was enjoying our vacation (maybe shopping for more clothes), so we were really just hoping he would help us reach some kind of (even marginally) satisfactory solution, and we could be on our way. That is what a decent company would do. He said he was sorry, but even though it's the same company and the same office and the same bloody desk even, he works for a different department and he cannot help us. Finally, we reached a point where we realized that whatever he ought to be able to do, in fact he was going to do nothing except repeat his lack of responsibility for the rip-off. So, I told him I was going to tell this little tale to whatever places would listen (including the Lonely Planet guidebooks, and they do often publish when they receive complaints or recommendations, so it may actually make a difference, though who knows?). And I took the pamphlet from his hand and prepared to leave. Apparently my taking of the pamphlet from his hand--I still had not lost my temper, but frankly I did not ask for the pamphlet back, I just took it--really made him angry. He stood up from his chair and leaned over the desk so that he was leaning over me; I thought he was going to hit me, and so did Teruaki and the other foreigners who were in the office waiting to be helped. Then he called me something in Vietnamese and told me he thought I was crazy and told me to get out of their office. It was unbelievable. For one thing, to lose it like that in Asia is a pretty big deal; the person who loses their temper loses face, theoretically. It's why Japanese always get all freaked when I lose mine, even if it has no connection to them whatsoever. For another thing, for a company representative to talk that way, and in that threatening manner, to someone who is complaining because the service received was quite clearly in conflict with what was promised, is just really weird. It's absolutely unthinkable in Japan; it would be virtually unthinkable in America, I would think. And for this to happen in a country and a town that is absolutely dependent on tourism is yet more bizarre.

Incidentally, I did not respond in kind to his little tirade. I basically just left. Teruaki and I are still undecided whether we are going to go back in the morning. After that little performance, I don't want to have anything more to do with them; still, $16 is a lot of money (relatively speaking--the ao dai I bought wasn't even $16, and it's silk and has a long tunic and pants--our hotel here is only $10 a night, so it's a lot of money). We'll see how we feel about it in the morning I guess.

So, we didn't see the ruins, and we won't have time now. Tomorrow at 2:00 pm we're off to Danang. We're mostly going to hang out on China Beach and try to relax after all this crap. Since I have no exciting tale to tell about the ancient kingdom of Champa and their religious relics, I decided to give you some of the more creative ways we have been cheated, and if you ever come to Vietnam, perhaps you can learn from our stories.

By the way, we saw the Japan-hating kid again today. He walked up to our table before he looked up and saw who we were; we both just started laughing heartily, and he went away. Unfortunately the little jerk was exiting the cafe at the same time we were, so we got treated to another little spiel about how rude and bad Japanese people are. I pointed out to him that perhaps he was the one being rude--I didn't go so far as to point out that just because there are little jerks like him running around, we don't go around saying we hate Vietnamese people. Although, frankly, after tonight's little festival at the tour company, I'm not so sure.

We've ridden in cyclos only two times. The first time was in Hanoi; we needed to go to the Hanoi train station, and I was tired, and anyway riding in a cyclo seemed cool. It is cool--we've enjoyed both rides--but we've gotten cheated both times. The first ride we finally got the two drivers (we had baggage, so we needed two cyclos) to agree to 20,000 dong each; that is already a fairly high price, considering the distance (if the Lonely Planet is anything to go by, it should have been 10,000 dong per cyclo, tops), but anyway, we agreed to 20,000 dong each, for a total of 40,000 dong. When we arrived I took out a 50,000 dong note [mistake one: always bring the exact amount--not having change is what led us to get cheated the second time too]; one of the drivers asked for one more 50,000 dong note, as if I'm that stupid. I said no, but no change was forthcoming either. So they just got an extra 10,000 dong on top of an already too-high price. Sweet deal for them. The second time, we were two people in one cyclo and we agreed on 20,000 dong for the ride--again, probably too high, but we figured it was maybe 10,000 per person. At the end, again we didn't have exact change, so the driver runs off to get change, runs back and hands us a 10,000 dong note--I had given him a 50,000. In other words, the price magically doubled over what we had agreed on; when we tried to argue, it was too late--oh, he doesn't understand English well enough, and anyway he's already peddling off. Cyclo drivers 2, tourists 0 and minus 30,000 dong (about $2).

Perhaps my favorite rip-off since we've been here has been this one, though. We got back to Hanoi really early from Sapa, about 6 am. Staggering back to the hotel from where the taxi driver had dropped us off (incidentally that taxi driver had tried to rip us off for a dollar, but stupid him, he turned on the meter so we could see what the actual price was, and that is what we paid), we noticed an early-morning market going on, so we went to look. We found some fruit that we had never seen before, and the lady cut one for us so we could taste. She couldn't speak English, really, so we were gesturing telling her how many we wanted. About that time, a lady--I shouldn't use that term--selling bananas walked up, and she could speak English, so she made like she wanted to help this deal go down. The first lady put the fruit in a bag for us, and then we asked how much (I can say that much in Vietnamese, along with 'post office' and 'delicious'). The banana lady says 15,000 dong--about a buck. We only had like four fruits, and they were small, so we were pretty sure that wasn't the actual price. If it were, virtually no Vietnamese would buy them. Anyway, the first lady starts making obvious signs of protest; I mean, we don't speak enough Vietnamese to follow what they were saying, but it was clear from her face and gestures that she was protesting that that wasn't the actual price. Still, the banana lady insisted, and I guess finally convinced her that it was ok to rip us off since we're foreigners. I was ready to just hand the fruit back to her to teach her a lesson, but right then the police came and I guess that market isn't strictly legal so all the vendors fled like lightning. They all carry everything in those two flat baskets with the bar between them that they put on their shoulders--I hope you know what I'm talking about, because I don't know what it's called, and that's maybe not such a great description--so they could clear out really fast, much faster than I would have expected. So there Teruaki and I were holding the fruit, having not yet paid. Did we run off with it, as we easily could have? No, because we are for the most part honest people and don't want to rip off some poor Vietnamese woman who probably really needs the money--ok, we don't really want to rip off anyone, but especially not her. So, we go looking for her, and we find her, and we ask again how much, and then magically the banana lady appears again. The long and short of this, I ended up telling the banana lady that she's a liar and a bad person, but we paid the stupid 15,000 dong anyway. I just couldn't believe that she would continue insisting on that price when it was obvious to us that that was not the price from the way the first lady reacted; how can you lie so openly like that? I felt like a parent who has just caught the kid stealing a cookie, but the kid puts it behind his back and denies everything vehemently. It's startling and bewildering to have someone continue to lie in the face of everything everybody in the room knows to be true. It's especially vexing when that person is not a child, but an adult, and is doing this because you are not Vietnamese.

There are many other similar tales--remember, we've only been here three weeks or so, so it isn't like these little vignettes have accumulated over a space of years of living here. Pretty much everyday something of this sort happens; I don't even get angry about it anymore. After three weeks of having these sorts of affairs--someone just blatantly ripping you off--occur on average once daily, you get sort of inured to it. You don't like it, and it all adds up to just give you a constant sour taste, a constant feeling that you can't relax or trust anyone, but you get to the point where it doesn't overtly irk you anymore either. Until today--$16 for seeing nothing, and then getting further ripped off by not having enough time left over to find some other way to go see the ruins (seeing these ruins was something I had been really looking forward to for quite some time), well, that's all just too much. And then to be cursed at (presumably) in Vietnamese and told that I'm crazy by the company who ripped me off in the first place--no, it's all just too much. I am bitterly angry over this. We've talked about it, and all in all, we are not enjoying this vacation; there's too much of this negative going around, and let's face it, this is not the only country where you can see ancient ruins. Neither of us feels at this point like we will ever want to come here again, unless something major changes about the way Vietnamese treat tourists and conduct business. It simply isn't pleasant, and right or wrong, I want my vacations to be pleasant. I accept various hardships related to travel, and many of the further hardships related to travel in developing areas (the sanitation problems, although so far Vietnam is the worst in that area, for example).

The Vietnamese also have a tendency to touch you without cause. I don't like strangers touching for me any reason, but especially not men and especially when it is not strictly necessary. One man in Hanoi, a motorbike driver, grabbed my arm and pinched it a couple of times and laughed--probably either because I'm fat or I have hair on my arms or both. It really creeped me out--although it was just my arm it still felt awful. And, let's face it--he drives a bike in Hanoi; I am not the first fat woman or the first woman with hair on her arms he has ever seen. No way. There was just simply no reason for it except to harass me, and I could have slapped him had I not been so startled by it. Other people here have done similar things--it's happened a lot. Thankfully, this is the only Asian country where this has happened to me (my students in Japan touch me a lot, but they aren't strangers). I really hate this; I don't know why they do it, but it's a big problem for me. Granted, it's clear that I have issues with this in particular; still, if they didn't touch me, I wouldn't be freaking out. Yuck. Eww. Heeby-jeeby.

The worst part of it is that the Vietnamese don't even smile when they're jacking you. They don't seem to smile much at all, at least not when dealing with tourists. We get no feeling at all that they are pleasant people, neither warm nor friendly, despite the assurances of the Lonely Planet. Instead, they're grumpy, as if it were a great bother to them to have to devise ways to take your money. I think they would be much happier if you just started passing it out to them for nothing as soon as you entered the country so they didn't have to invent scams and ways to cheat you.

I'm sorry--I was keeping back most of these stories, like I said, because I didn't want this to be a Vietnamese-bashing blog. But, seriously, this is what our vacation is much of the time. Again, we do feel satisfied with what we got from the tailors, and there have also been scattered interactions with people here that have been pleasant and interesting. Unfortunately in every case except for our bike ride in Hue, all of those pleasant interactions have either been with other foreigners or with someone we were buying something expensive from (like the tailors). I'm getting sick of the feeling like I'm just a walking wallet to the Vietnamese people; it actually makes me think of that story from "The Tunnels of Cu Chi" that I related before. I'm not sure any of the Vietnamese people we've met would be capable of feeling compassion for a Westerner, maybe not even for another Asian. If you cannot feel compassion for someone who is not in your immediate circle, it seems to me you're just missing something really important, something crucially human. Japanese are really lacking in this area as well; they are infamous for turning away refugees because they just cannot feel compassion, really, for people they don't know. I don't know--maybe I am just way too sensitive, but being seen through eyes that could never have compassion for me (and didn't, say, for my father and uncles), is making me feel ill; I can't deal with it. And I think it is the lack of compassion, the dehumanizing of the tourists, that allows them to be so callous about lying to us and stealing our money.

OK, let's just get one thing clear: yes, I am quite aware that there are scams, liars, and thieves in every country; that there are bad people in every country; that many tourists are also not perhaps great people themselves. Yes, I know. I have been ripped off and stolen from and treated like dirt in other countries as well. It just has never happened to me before every day for three weeks. It's the frequency that's getting to me. And the touching. That's way bad.

Well, I'm going to bed now. Tomorrow, it's off to Danang. Sorry if this is full of typos and bad grammar--I am way too tired and weary to proofread.

Love you all. Terribly, terribly homesick...

P.S. Thanks for the comments, Uncle Mitch. It's nice to hear from you. And finally, our health is fine--even the diarrhea seems to be clearing up. Thank heavens.

Julie

a small hoi an anecdote

2004-08-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday we were sitting in a cafe waiting for our food, and these kids are going around selling stuff. That seems to be the norm in Vietnam--I hear if you get into the national parks, more off the tourist trail, there is less of this kind of thing, which stands to reason, but otherwise it's pretty constant. They come to your table and show you postcards, (probably fake) jade necklaces and bracelets, and a variety of other crap that you neither need nor want. Most of them accept your "no, thank you" and move on. But occasionally some of them see fit to tell you their tale of woe--which may or may not be true (one girl told me she couldn't go to school the next day if I didn't buy the whatever from her--but schools are on summer vacation, and she wouldn't have school anyway, though she may well need the money anyway)--or complain to you about how unfair it is that you, the rich tourist, have so much money yet you will not give it to them. Yesterday, we got a particularly surly variation of the latter.

He had one blue bracelet that I thought was rather cute, but Teruaki didn't like it so I decided to decline. It's not that I let Teruaki rule my wardrobe--mostly he doesn't care all that much--but if he really doesn't like something, it seems silly to buy it when (besides myself) he's about the person to whom my appearance really matters. Anyway, this kid had asked where we were from previously, and we told him. When I refused the bracelet, he said he could see that we must have a terrible relationship, always fighting, with me always bending myself to the domineering will of the evil Teruaki. We both started giggling at that--the reverse is not true either, but it would be somewhat closer to the truth, anyway. But this kid kept going on and on about how he knew our lives were so miserable; he said "your life is just eating, sleeping, fighting, eating, fighting, sleeping." At this point, we were both laughing quite openly--we never fight. Don't get me wrong--I lose my temper almost as often as I ever have, but Teruaki never does, and anyway I don't think I have ever been angry at him.

Then this kid went on and on--"Japanese people always look but they never buy [sic], so now I hate Japan and Japan people [sic]." At this point I wouldn't have bought anything from him if he had the Holy Grail for sale.

So, today we're sitting in another cafe enjoying our lemon juice and hoping the day's heat wanes even just so slightly while we're in there, when the round of kids selling things starts up. Enter the kid from last night. After getting rejected by all the other tables, he approaches us--at first he doesn't remember us, then he does and hesitates. Yet still, on he comes. Great. He reminds me that yesterday I had seemed interested in the blue bracelet; I say indeed I had been, but that after his little anti-Japanese spiel (not to mention the "your life is so miserable" part), I wasn't even close to ready to buy from him. He asks why not, so I explain and tell him to go away. He says that he may hate Japanese but he doesn't hate Americans, so since I'm American I can still buy from him. I thank him for the incredible generosity of that offer but tell him to go away--I also throw in the helpful advice that if he wants to sell something, he might be better off not insulting the nation of any of the involved parties. He argues with me a bit, as if it will help, and then finally wanders away muttering that "this is bullsh*t".

Ah, the warm, friendly Vietnamese people.

handmade in hoi an

2004-08-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Today we shopped like crazy. We're in Hoi An now, a place famous for its tailor-made silk (and fake silk) clothes. We were pretty sure when we first got here that we were only going to be able to afford a piece or two, if that, but as it turned out we got practically a whole new wardrobe. We set a limit of $100, which we haven't yet used, but I think I'm going to get a couple more shirts made tomorrow. For the money we've used so far, I've got two skirts, two pairs of pants, an ao dai (ao dai is the name of the traditional dress of Vietnamese--the dress over pants affair, very lovely), a Chinese-style shirt, and Teruaki got a pair of cargo pants. Rad. Not all of those are silk, but they are all tailor-made, and my pants and one of my skirts also have embroidery on them. We'll get them all tomorrow. I also got a handbag to go with my ao dai, sandals to go with my ao dai, and a bunch of other little stuff. We even got a wee hand-embroidered T-shirt and a little hand-carved toy for our baby. For now, we're sticking with unisex gifts for the baby.

Up until now, we haven't been spending much money. We've been using only about $30 a day, including transport between towns. And we hadn't been buying so many souvenirs, really. But we're getting to the end now, and we have wads of cash left over, so we went a little nuts today. It's all good. We still have plenty left to get back home with--plenty. I expect we'll have one more shopping spree on our last day in Hanoi.

Between shops, we just sort of wandered around the Hoi An old town. Hoi An was Vietnam's most important port city, back in the day (about 400 years ago, much around the same time as the heyday of Melaka and Macau), and there were many foreigners living here, mainly Chinese and Japanese. Also, this area was a hotbed of Cham activity (the Cham being an ancient people of Vietnam--more about them tomorrow), and this area was largely spared during the war since it was no longer very strategically important. All of this means that there are some extravagant old buildings still very well-preserved here. There aren't many Japanese structures left, just one covered bridge. But the Chinese buildings are really something. Today we visited a family temple, i.e., a temple built for the express purpose of worshipping the ancestors. Part of the worhsipping of the ancestors includes collecting their ceramics through the ages, and so there was a fabulous collection of antique Chinese ceramics, mostly blue and white. We also visited a meeting hall of one group of the Chinese living here--I think we visited the Cantonese hall. It was so filled with sculpture and altars that I'm not sure where they had the meetings, but like most Chinese structures it made for visually overwhelming viewing.

Tonight for dinner we tried the local specialties. One of these is called the "white rose", and that makes it sound more exotic than it is. It's just little shrimps wrapped in rice paper and dipped in a spicy chili sauce. They were good, but I'm not sure they quite warrant such an exotic name. Then there were fried wonton--and they were fried wonton with another chili sauce, but they were also topped with stir-fried vegetables which gave them an interesting twist. Finally there was our favorite dish, a heavenly creation known as cao lau. I can't pronounce that, at least not in any way that a Vietnamese can understand, but dang it's good. It's fat, chewy rice noodles in a rich broth--not much broth, really, it's more of a dipping sauce. This is topped with sliced roasted pork, wonton skins fried crispy, bean sprouts, and a collection of various greens. We both loved it, but Teruaki has this thing about herbs. He really doesn't like most fresh herbs or grasses--lettuce and stuff is ok, but it's the strongly flavored ones like the basil and coriander and whatnot that were in this that he isn't crazy about. It's fairly typical of Japanese actually--they use almost no spice in their cooking, so they are not at all sure what to do about herbs and spices. Teruaki is gradually growing used to cinnamon and nutmeg--most Japanese people don't like either of those much--and of course he is cool with dried herbs in things like spaghetti. But he gets all freaked out by anything with what he always calls "grass taste". What a weirdo.

Oh--and at this hotel here we get MTVThailand of all things. When they play music videos (which, like MTV anywhere, is becoming an increasingly rare event), it's a mixture of Thai and Western, with the occasional Japanese or Chinese thrown in. But a lot of it is the programming which is all in Thai. I guess they get that station because they get a fairly high number of Thai tourists here--we also get stations in English, English English (BBC), French, Vietnamese, and occasionally we seem to be getting German or Dutch. Quite a mix.

Well, tomorrow the plan is to go to some Cham ruins about 25 km or so away from here. They look really fabulous in pictures--I'm sure they'll be even better in person. We are NOT going with a tour group; we'll either hire a car and driver (preferably) or rent a motorcycle and go by ourselves. Should be exciting. I'll probably post again tomorrow since the Internet is conveniently located here in the lobby of our hotel. Then we're off to Danang for about a day and a half, then back to Hanoi. I'm afraid we're not going to make it to Saigon--there's just too much to do, and we didn't want to rush around and do everything at top speed just so we could say we did it. Next time we come to Vietnam, we'll start from the south end and see how far we get. With the kid. Stay tuned for that.

Anyway, that's all for now. Love y'all. Take care.

Julie

huelcome to hue, part 1: the devil and the dmz

2004-08-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

Clever title, que no?

I'm actually writing this from Hoi An since we couldn't get a decent Internet connection in Hue, so I'm postdating it and the memories are quite as fresh maybe. You're just going to have to deal with it.

There will be a Hue Part 2 as well, although heaven only knows where I'll write that one from. Hanoi maybe. Just adds to the "international girl of mystery" affect does it not?

Alright, so we got to Hue on maybe August 14 or 15. It's hard to keep track. We went by train from Hanoi, and it takes like 13 hours or more, and when you get off you no longer remember anything, let alone the date. The first day we were too beat from the train journey and the heat to do much. The next day we went to the DMZ. I am going to assume you all know what I mean by "DMZ"--if you don't, it's back to high school history classes for you.

We went as part of a group tour. The Lonely Planet indicates that that is really the only way you can go (unless you rent a car or motorbike and brave the traffic yourselves, but even then the sites are largely unmarked, so I think it would be pretty tough to go on your own)--we found out afterward that it ain't necessarily so. One place in town (at least) runs small tours--just your group, be it two or five. That place also happens to be a cafe (the Stop & Go Cafe, and it is listed in the Lonely Planet) run by the awesome Mr. Do. After meeting him, I really wish we had gone with him instead--next time. He is a Vietnamese artist who looks like Uncle Mitch, only with really long platinum blond hair. The cafe has really, really good food too, except the banana pancake which is really not good. Everything else was though, and we ate there several times during our stay in Hue. And Mr. Do is just really so friendly and cool--dang, I wish we had gone to the DMZ with Mr. Do. OK, OK, I digress. The long and the short of it is: just as you suspect it will, the big tour bus thing really sucks eggs. Really. There's like 45 people, most of them either British or stupid or both, who are mainly just there to clog up the Vinh Moc tunnels and buy fake Viet Cong war medals.

The DMZ sites themselves are mostly hard to recognize as being anything. We saw the Rockpile, which apparently was a U.S. lookout at one time. Doesn't look like much of anything now. We saw Dakrong Bridge and parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail--they mainly just looked like a bridge and roads. It was a bit anticlimactic. The area around the Rockpile is quite notable, though, for its extremely young and not diverse vegetation; the jungle in that area was all destroyed by Agent Orange of course, and it does look notably different from the rest of the Vietnamese countryside. There are also still bomb craters--and bombs, though we didn't see any except in the museum.

One area that is well-preserved is the Vinh Moc tunnels. They have been modified only slightly for tourists; they put up a few signs to show you how to get back out, a few signs labeling uses of the different rooms, and a few electric lights in the places where there are stairs or slopes. These tunnels were really creepy. They have three levels: the first is at a depth of 12 meters, the next is at a depth of 15 meters, and the deepest is a whopping 23 meters. They have a meeting room down in that level which is noticeable only as a slight widening and heightening of the tunnel. Incidentally, these tunnels are not ones you have to crawl into; you can walk pretty much upright (depending on your height) throughout. About 90 families lived in these tunnels for about 5 years (late 1966-early 1972) and so there are "family rooms" carved throughout, i.e., spaces the size of a refrigerator where the family could retire to have some privacy. Apparently they found some privacy because 17 babies were born during those 5 years, and there was a special room for that as well, maybe the size of two refrigerators. Amazing. To imagine living in something like that is to imagine unimaginable suffering. They came up every few days, when it was safe enough, and they tried to grow fresh food when they could.

Aside: one of the most disturbing moments for me since we've been here has come from a book, "The Tunnels of Cu Chi". All around it's a fairly disturbing book, all about the tunnel warfare with equal space given to the Viet Cong side and the American (and Aussie) "tunnel rats", at least those who would talk about it. Anyway, there is one anecdote in the book related by a woman VC guerilla. She was apparently a noted sniper in her time, and one day she was out on watch, when three Marines came into a clearing right in front of her. She had a little boy with her to help her with ammo and whatnot, I guess, so he witnessed this, and he got all excited at the prospect at getting three of the enemy so easily. She was, too, but something made her hold off; the Marines were behaving mysteriously, so she waited. The Marines sat down and pulled out letters and pictures--whether they were from their own families or those of fallen friends, it wasn't clear, but after reading them and passing around the pictures, they burned them all. They shared a snack and talked, seemed to be reminiscing of home, though she couldn't understand English. Then they started crying. She was totally baffled and recalls wondering if these enemies had the same human feelings--loneliness, longing for home, wishing to see their families and sleep in their own beds--as the VC. Could it be? She continued to hold off killing them wondering if maybe they weren't cold-blooded killers after all, but just boys who were made to go to a far-off country by their government, boys who were scared and homesick. Finally, they walked off, and she let them go, much to the suprise of the boy with her. The boy reported her strange behavior to the commander of her unit; she told the story, and they did not reprimand her, but they did suggest perhaps she was ready for retirement. While I am glad this one woman had this breakthrough, the sudden ability to see "the enemy" as human, it made me angry and sad and extremely upset to hear that it had not occurred to her previously. Why should you have to see someone cry to know they are human? End of aside.

The other interesting thing about our DMZ tour was the remains of the Khe Sanh combat base. For anyone who doesn't know, there was a very long, very bloody siege here just before the Tet Offensive of 1968. The base isn't left, because the American military thoroughly dismantled it before abandoning it. But the airstrip is still clearly visible; after 30 years or more, nothing grows on it. There is also a museum with pictures of the base and the battle--not many, but a few, and the captions are written with a definite Vietnamese slant. There is also an array of ammunition and weaponry on display along with some helicopters. And there are people selling little trinkets--coins, dogtags, medals of various sort, probably fake.

On our tour we did not get to go to Hamburger Hill or to the Truong Song National Cemetery, where many fallen North Vietnamese army are buried. All in all, the tour bus thing is a bit of a wash; I am really glad we got to go to Vinh Moc, however disturbing it was, but the Dakrong Bridge is just a bridge.

The bus did make one other stop, and this one was perhaps the most disturbing of the day, in some ways. It pulls up in the middle of a traditional village of some ethnic minority people--I think they're Lao. There are stilt houses and the tour guide tells you it's a great opportunity to take pictures of the traditional lifestyle. As soon as you get off the bus, kids run up to you saying "picture, picture". Silly me, I thought they were like Japanese kids and just love to get their picture taken. No, as soon as you take their picture, they change the chant to "money, money". The little robbers want 10,000 dong for a picture, for each kid that is in the picture, which means they wanted 40,000 dong for one picture that I took that I didn't even want (I took it to please them with the idea of erasing it later--nice digital camera). 10,000 dong is not a lot of money by our standards--less than a buck--but relative to this economy, it's quite a bit. It'll buy you a meal in a restaurant, for example. I refused the money thing--I mean, they asked to get their picture taken. Anyway, so there's this tour bus full of white tourists (and Teruaki) hanging out in the middle of this village just getting constantly hounded by kids, "money money money money". These kids will even slap gently at you if you're not paying sufficient attention, or pinch you lightly. I was surrounded, as were all the tourists, the whole 15 minutes or whatever we were there. And it's bloody odd to just get off in the middle of these people's little village anyway. It was just really uncomfortable, and the thought that so many tour buses must come, and that must be all these kids do is just hound people for money and watch these big, bewildered people with cameras worth more than the kids can even imagine tramp around their village. It was awful, really surreal, but not in a good way.

I did finally manage to get the kids off me by chasing them around with my hand held out chanting "money money money money". Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery, and they seemed to know it as well.

Well, that's the DMZ ride. Next time, folks, we'll delve into the historical aspects of Hue a bit and take a bicycle ride through the countryside, a place where apparently the people have never seen a white person ride a bicycle before. Groovy.

Take care, everyone. Hugs n kisses...
Julie

to the sea, to the sea

2004-08-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

Good lord, I was just re-reading my last post, and I found some really bad grammatical mistakes. I am going to have to proofread these things. Sorry--I know you have all come to expect higher standards from me.

OK, it's been a few days, so a lot has happened obviously, and I'm going to have to just hit the highlights. We both seem to be in good health, except for the obvious (ye olde travelers' diarrhea, which we cannot seem to shake and have no idea where we got, maybe from the grapes in China--if possible, always blame China). The pregnancy seems to be going along normally, which means I am perpetually sleepy, hungry, and nauseous. I haven't gained any weight yet, but I have noticed an increase in appetite. The sleepiness and nausea are both exacerbated by the heat here. Allow me to complain about the heat for a moment.

Back in the day when I first read "The Things They Carried" (Vietnam war story by Tim O'Brien and one of the best books I've read--you should all read it, immediately), I tried to imagine what it was like 'humping' all those heavy belongings through the Vietnamese heat. He doesn't actually dwell so much on that aspect on it--but it does all add up into a pretty picture of absolute misery, all that weight, slogging along through intense heat and saturation humidity. Not something I'd want to do. But you can't really imagine it, I guess, until you're here. Now, I'm starting to get it. The heat here is unlike any heat I've ever experienced; I suppose it's in the intensity of the humidity, rather than the heat itself. You cannot move without sweating, not even so much as breathe. The weight of the air is oppressive, smothering you throughout the day. Teruaki almost never sweats in Japan, despite how hot this summer has been there, yet he sweats all the time here. We drink liters and liters of bottled water everyday just trying to keep up. It's really, truly awful. And so few buildings are air-conditioned--this Internet cafe, like most other places, has only fans. But it's still like heaven compared to being outside. Again, though, just as the heat is exacerbating the nausea and fatigue, the opposite is also true; I am sure I would deal with the heat better were I not at the same time dealing with frequent nausea and constant fatigue.

Alright, then, back to the travel. The past few days have been really great.

We're back in Hanoi after having gone to Halong Bay to go sea kayaking. Halong Bay is, well, a bay in which there are some 2000 or so limestone islets. The water is fairly shallow and between islets there are a lot of turquoise lagoons, and the islets themselves often have little caves and grottoes (some of which you can kayak through) and tiny beaches just big enough for you and few friends, but with fine white sand. It's beautiful enough that UNESCO made a large portion of it into a World Heritage site, and the Vietnamese government protects another large portion as National Park. It's nice to know that it is being protected--people clean the trash out of the ocean when the tides bring it in, there is no monkey hunting allowed (there are monkeys, and we did see some; there are also a few left of some rare species of langur that only lives on one island in the bay and those langurs are bloody adorable, though we didn't see any in person), and so on.

We went as part of an organized tour. The first day was spent with our group on a big boat floating around looking at the general picture of the bay. Our group was 8 Dutch people (a family of 6, and a separate couple), 2 Australians, and us. I liked everyone in our group pretty well, and that's pretty rare. We hung out on the boat, swam, and ate and slept on the boat. It was OK, though frankly the most exciting part of that day was just talking to everyone and getting to know them.

There is something else about the bay, though, and we did get to see this a bit from the boat. Throughout the bay are floating villages, some are really just a few houses, but a few are real villages. Most of the people living in these floating houses (not houseboats, but actual houses set on floating raft-like structures) are fish farmers, but some farm pearls. A few of the houses were pretty big--we even saw one that was two stories--and many of these people keep pets out there on their rafts. In the larger settlements, there are floating restaurants, floating karaoke pubs, and a floating elementary school for the local children. It's really amazing to see all these people conducting their normal lives without any land in sight. The mind boggles.

Aside: Actually, one thing we are noticing and in constant awe of here is how intensely without variety the average Vietnamese life must be. This is a very agrarian society--the vast majority of the people here do not know of any other way and cannot even imagine leaving their village. To some of the people we've talked to, even Ho Chi Minh City seems a unfathomable distance, a whole world away. They keep farming their rice, using the same tools (including the picturesque water buffalo) their ancestors use. They may make a few concessions to modernity; perhaps the family has a motorbike to use sometimes. But the basic daily life is the same as it must have been since antiquity. It not only does not change, it does not seem anyone feels it should. I don't know what sort of earth-shattering event might eventually bring change; maybe as the surrounding countries do change, Vietnam will begin to feel pressure to follow suit, but even this seems far-fetched. The overall atmosphere of the country--at least what we've felt since we've been here--is this feeling of eternal sameness. The life changes with the seasons, but from year to year, century to century, it goes on the same. We will no doubt see a different side when we get to Saigon. (end of Aside)

The next day we alighted on Cat Ba Island (where the langurs live). Teruaki and I swam all day and miraculously didn't get sunburned, while the others all went on a very difficult trek through the national park--they didn't see any langurs, so we didn't feel that bad about missing it, and I know if I'd gone I would have died in the heat. The Dutch were really suffering from it; one of them was quite near tears.

The next day we got transferred to a different, private island owned (or maybe leased, I don't know) by our tour company where they run their kayak tours from. It turned out there were only six of us in this tour--the Australians, us, and two new people, also Australian. All the Dutch went home, I guess. The new Australians were also really cool people, it turned out, and it may well be that all Australians are cool people. I can't prove that, but I have yet to encounter an uncool Australian. In fact, I can't think of any uncool thing about Australia except maybe "Crocodile Dundee", and I'm willing to forgive them that.

Alright, so there are six of us on this teeny islet (cue Gilligan's Island theme song), plus two tour guides and a host of Vietnamese men who seem to take care of the island--they did the cooking, cleaning, and other chores in between time when they were building a little fish farm. Busy guys. That morning, we just sort of swam and got to know each other until lunch. After our excellent Vietnamese lunch, we went for a short kayak tour (about 3 hours). This was the first time kayaking for Teruaki and me. It turns out that we're pretty good at it--the Australians had all kayaked before, yet we kept up with them with no trouble. And Teruaki steers really well (usually--we did hit one rather large rock, and one time he started steering us to the open sea while the others were all heading toward base camp). I was worried that I wouldn't have the upper body strength, but apparently I have a reserve of energy in the crucial area between my shoulder blades that I never knew about. Kayaking is way fun--skimming right across the water, close enough to look at the fishies swimming and jumping about, and really getting to notice the size and grandeur and geological details of all these limestone outcroppings from the sea. I found this way of seeing the bay much more personal, much more participatory, and ultimately a great deal more satisfying than watching it go past from the big boat. I guess it would be like the difference between flying over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter and actually hiking it--something like that. (Incidentally, our tour company was Handspan--you can find them on the web if you're interested in kayaking Halong Bay--I would recommend this tour quite highly. They took good care of us.)

Anyway, after the kayaking we swam and ate a great dinner, and talked. Then we slept on the island, in little huts filled with insect life. We did have mosquito nets, and we sprayed ourselves liberally with repellant, but still Teruaki got a few bites from something. He does not (yet!) have symptoms of any dreadful tropical disease, so we think he's probably OK. I didn't get any bites at all, despite the array of critters available to bite me.

The next day we woke up and spent about two and a half hours kayaking again. It turns out two of the Australians--the two who we joined up with mid-way through--were going on a whole day's kayak and then sleeping on the island again that night, whereas we were meant to go back to Hanoi after just a morning of kayaking, so we bid those two goodbye in the morning. Our group kayaked to Monkey Beach. It's a decent beach, but loaded with Vietnamese and Chinese tourists. They don't swim so much, but they spit a lot (a lot!!) everywhere, so it doesn't make one feel like one wants to jump on in. They also stare a great deal at any non-Asian, as if we were the ones hawking loogies everywhere. No manners, those Monkey Island tourists. Anyway, there are monkeys there, and we watched three little guys frolicking. They would run up the tree and attack each other, causing the one who had been in the tree to fall out, and then the other would attack from the ground the one that fell. It was like WWF, only these guys were much smaller. No less simian, either. We noticed another parallel with human behavior; eventually the mama monkey came out, and suddenly the three kids (like magic!) stopped their fighting and started pretending like they were serious little monkeys only interested in gathering twigs and eating. Mama watched this behavior suspiciously--she seemed to know that the good little monkeys only came out when she was there watching. Then a big old papa monkey came out and gave the tourists a very dirty look and made it clear that if we were to make a move toward the babies, we were going to have to deal with him. It was all lovely--I took many pictures, and it was a good chance to try out the 'action' setting on my new camera--it works great. Finally we got back in our kayaks and paddled back to base camp, ate lunch, and napped. Then a boat came and we began our arduous journey back to Hanoi--a boat, a hydrofoil, and a minivan and about 5 hours later, we arrived in Hanoi. There we checked into our hotel, ordered pizza in, watched the Cartoon Network (I love "Sheep in the Big City") for as long as we could keep our eyes open, and slept the sleep of the dead.

The two Australians we were with the whole time, Karen and Ben, are mother and son. Ben is only 13, I guess, but he was really mature and self-possessed and didn't act like a kid at all. Also, he reads constantly, and he and his mother seem to never fight or have any issue at all. Karen is also very self-possessed and confident but totally grounded. The four of us really became friends. I was pretty sorry to separate from them yesterday.

Today, we're buying a few souvenirs (got you something nice, Rico), doing this, and running a few errands. We gotta go to the post office to mail some of these souvenirs out--we can't carry them all. Our train for Hue departs at 11:00 p.m., and we have an air-conditioned sleeper on that train, so we'll sleep and then arrive in Hue at the convenient time of 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. Super.

Oh, there is one more thing worth putting up here, I guess. We went to the snake town. Attention vegetarians, animal lovers, and squeamish types: SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH--it ain't pretty. I am totally traumatized--it was really unforgettable, really scarring. It was awful. I will attempt to describe it to you without vomiting (or inducing vomiting in you). Alright, so you get to the restaurant, and the first thing you see is a big wall of jars of rice liquor with snakes in various arrangements in the liquor. Then you notice there is a cage of snakes hissing at you--some of them are cobras, but I'm not sure they all are. A guy takes your snake of choice out of the cage and two or three guys wrestle with it (one of these guys is missing half of his right hand because he got bit by a cobra once), slit it open and drain its blood into a glass. At this time they also take the heart and stomach out. Then you go upstairs and sit in a lovely dining room, a la chinoise. A man appears with the stomach and heart and the blood, along with some rice liquor. First he mixes rice liquor and the "bile" and encourages you to shoot this--he shoots it with you, for the camaraderie. He puts the still-beating heart into one of the shot glasses, with the bile liquor, and you're meant to shoot that right down with the liquor to make you strong. Next, he mixes the blood with yet more liquor and you do a round of that--it's meant to be good for the skin. Um, ok. This man will accompany you throughout the meal to explain what you are getting. Next, a whole succession of snake meat-based dishes are brought before you. Most of them are pretty benign: snake meat sauteed with lemon grass with a lime-pepper dipping sauce, snake spring rolls, snake liver rolled in omelet, etc. Then there are the very dubious snake flakes and the deep-fried snake skin. Interestingly, deep-fried snake skin tastes like deep-fried pork skin, so maybe deep-fried animal skins all taste alike. Maybe. Anyway, after you've eaten your fill--and mind you these things are all reasonably tasty and non-traumatizing--you get a really big bill. At least if you chose cobra you get a really big bill. I hear cobra is the most expensive; python is maybe cheaper because there is more meat. Oh, everytime I think of the blood and bile and still-beating heart, I just know I'm going to vomit. Oh. I may have had the stomach for such an event pre-pregnancy, but I certainly do not have the stomach for it now.

These days I just want nice, safe, normal things to eat. Teruaki insists it is probably my body trying to ensure that the food I eat is safe for my health and that of the baby--he may be right. Snake bile does not fall into that category, whatever the Chinese say it does for you. A nice grilled cheese sandwich--that's the ticket. Or a nice big bowl of chicken pho with lots of chili and lime.

OK, I started proofreading but this is long, Teruaki is bored, and I'm lazy. So, I hope it is at least comprehensible and that you will forgive me my trespasses (as I forgive those who trespass against me). We'll spend a few days in and around Hue before pressing on to HCMC. I'll write more later.

Try not to worry, Mom. Things are going fine. And we so far have more money than we thought we would at this point in our trip, so that department should be fine. Not to mention we already bought plane tickets back to Guangzhou--no more Chinese grapes for us!

Hope all is well out there. Miss you all. And I desperately miss Mexican food.
Love,
Julie

sunburnt in sapa

2004-08-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

OK, I am going to keep this short because I don't know if this will even go through. This is the slowest Internet connection I've had since 1992, and I'm getting very tired of it. Granted, I am in the mountains of north Vietnam, but if they are going to charge you for something, they ought to make sure it is minimally usable. But, like so many other things in this country, it is probably designed to rip off tourists. Gee, do I sound bitter?

Alright, so we got to Sapa, and then spent our first day going by jeep over extremely rough roads to a traditional Flower Hmong (they're an ethnic minority group in this area) market at Coc Ly. The market was pretty interesting, but it was really hot and dusty, and the jeep ride was doing neither of us much good. Also, if you want to buy anything at that market, assume that the price they just quoted you is doubled for tourists--if they won't come down to half the quoted price or nearly half, just walk away. Seriously--I bought a silver bracelet there that the girl originally told me 70,000 dong (that's in the neighborhood of $4.50). There happened to be a crowd of Hmong people watching, and they all started snickering at that price, a sure sign she was trying to rip us off. We got her down to 50,000 dong, but only because we were walking away; we found out later that for a Hmong or Vietnamese, the price would have been about 30,000 dong. That difference is only about a dollar and some change, which might not seem like much, but it is when your daily budget is only $50--those little dollars here and there add up fast enough. And then there is the principle of the thing.

Anyway, I think due to the jeep ride, that evening in Sapa at our hotel, I started having trouble with my belly (cramping, some bleeding--not good), so we decided not to go on the trekking and homestay tour. Instead, we have been in Sapa all this time doing virtually nothing, because there is not much to do here. The first day we just stayed in our hotel most of the day, resting and just going out to eat occasionally. I told Teruaki he could go out, but he wouldn't, so we were just bored together. I read "The Quiet American".

The view from our hotel was spectacular. The hotel is on one ridge of a steep valley, with rugged, verdant mountains rising opposite. Those mountains play host to clouds and mist nearly all day long, and in the afternoons you can watch the rain start to creep over them, and then tumble into the valley. The valley is home to a lot of farmers, mostly Black Hmong (they aren't black people--they dress in black), and so there are terraced rice paddies and gardens throughout.

Yesterday, I was feeling better so we went for a short hike. It's a trail down into that valley to see a waterfall. It's very steep. We didn't take much sun protection (i.e., hat) because we would have sworn it was going to rain; it was very cloudy when we left. Anyway, it sure enough cleared up later, and we both got burnt. Obviously, I got more burnt than Teruaki, but it's not too bad--just bad enough to be annoying, really. I did use some sunscreen, but we are at a very high elevation so I probably should have applied it twice.

Sapa is a quiet little mountain town that has become a tourist hub. There are a lot of shops here selling the local Hmong and Dzay embroidery, hotels, and eateries--even a pub. Everybody knows us in this little town--most tourists don't stick around this long because most of them come for the trekking, not to just hang out.

The town is overrun with Hmong and Dzay women selling their crafts. As soon as you step outside your hotel, you start getting hounded by them to buy their blankets and pillow covers and whatnot. They do beautiful work, but one can only buy so much--and one doesn't necessarily like the pressure of being surrounded by women and girls saying "buy from me, buy from me". Sometimes they even grab you as you walk by. As you sit in a restaurant eating your lunch, they come up the doors and say "hello, buy from me buy from me". It seems to be the Sapa mantra. Most of the young ones speak reasonably good English. They learn it in school, it seems, plus they spend so much time talking to tourists, that I guess they pick it up. The younger ones, see, have come to realize that if you spend some time talking to the tourists, following them around and asking questions about their family and so forth, then the tourist is more likely to buy. It's true, I'm sure, but I don't like it. Anyway, all the Black Hmong ladies in town now know my name, and so as I'm eating they yell into the restaurant, "Hello, Julie, you buy from me". At first it seems colorful. After a few days, it's mainly just really annoying. We don't have room for a blanket, no matter how lovely and cheap, in our backpack--nor do we have a desire for a blanket. Another trick is they get you to say "maybe tomorrow I'll buy a bracelet from you", and then if you don't buy actually buy it, they put the big guilt trip on you like you're a big liar. They understand English well enough that they know what you actually said; they also seem to know that white tourists guilt pretty easily. I am cynical, aren't I? I think, like I said, for most tourists here, it just seems like a colorful part of "The Sapa experience", but if you're here for a few days and cannot leave your hotel with looking around like a spy to see if there are any Hmong waiting outside for you (and there usually are) or cannot eat a meal without listening to the "buy from me" mantra, it gets very old, very tiresome. Lord, I am weary.

There is one place that seems to be safe from the Hmong. I don't know why, but there are never any around there, so we eat there a lot. Actually we eat there a lot because the food is cheap and delicious, and it is also for a good cause. It is called Baguette et Chocolat--they have them in Hanoi as well, maybe also in Saigon but I'm not sure. These cafes not only make the best pain au chocolat you've ever eaten (for 6000 dong--about 40 cents), but also serve as a school and training grounds for street kids and kids of invalids and so on. These are kids who wouldn't have much of a chance at anything else, but they get trained as pastry chefs or managers, they learn some English, they learn how to keep records on a computer, and a bunch of other useful skills for working in the restaurant/hotel business, and apparently they have a high placement rate. All of this, and no getting harangued by Hmong.

Anyway, tonight we go back to Hanoi by night train. I am a little worried about the ride back to the train station--as I recall it was a bit bumpy. My condition seems to have stabilized for now, but I am freaking out thinking that if we encounter another bumpy ride, the whole thing is going to go. Wish me luck. There's nothing else I can do except go back like this, so I just have to hope for the best. After this, we will be in Hanoi one day, then we are going to Halong Bay. Should be OK after that.

Huh, didn't I say that I was going to keep this short?

Mom and Rico--where are you guys? Are you OK?

Julie

vive l'indochine

2004-08-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, let's see if we can get this to work today. Just forget about the trip from China. I will just say this: do not EVER do what we did, cross from Hong Kong to Vietnam through China. It isn't fun, it isn't an adventure, you will not grow as a person. You will merely suffer. That being said, we did learn a few things, key among them that apparently wherever you go in the world, Lipton tea is available (much like Coca-cola). Also, at the train station in Guangzhou, the only beer we saw for sale was, of all things, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Who would have thunk it? I may add some of our other experiences later on, but now let's just get caught up on Hanoi, shall we?

When we were going through passport control to come into Vietnam, I noticed a long list of things that you may not bring into the country. It included the usual things, mostly, along with a few that only a communist country would think of. But the prohibited item that most stood out to us was "social order and security". That is a direct quote from the customs form. Having now spent a couple of days in Vietnam, I think I understand: they prefer a (mostly) controlled chaos.

First there are the bus systems. We noticed this in China, as well. The bus does leave from a specified point at a specified time, but then it stops all the time to let more people on, no matter if there are available seats or not. Some of these people are just standing, basically, in the middle of a sugar cane field with no house or other edifice in sight, yet there they are, waiting for the bus. These people can and will seemingly just wait all day until whenever the bus gets there. And they always seem to have a collection of strange belongings with them. One girl had a large bundle of bras. One man had a bucket of spare shoes. One fellow carried some sort of electronic component and seriously got off in the middle of nowhere. What use for electronics could he have in a rice paddy? I don't know, but this kind of thing is the norm here, and while there are so many elements of unpredictability about it, there is a kind of system as well. People seem to know that a bus will be coming and will eventually get where it says its going. How they know this, I have no idea. But they do.

Hanoi is wonderful. While the French may have been morally wrong to colonize Vietnam, aesthetically it was a great triumph. A great deal of colonial architecture survives here in Hanoi, much of it painted in tropical colors, and the combination of French and Asian really works. Plus, you can do cool things like eat, for example, what I ate last night: a croque monsieur (a French-style grilled ham and cheese basically) with a "banana flower salad", with shreds of beef, chilis, basil, peanuts, and fish sauce out the wazoo. It was a great meal, truly great. And it cost, with a lime juice to drink, about $4. That's fairly expensive by Hanoi standards, but Teruaki and I have mostly been sticking to a slightly more expensive level of eats. For one thing, I get nauseous a lot, and some of the street stall food has been just not something I could handle. Plus, we really want to be careful of my health now--it's one thing to get sick from street food when you're otherwise normal. It's another thing when you also have the nausea and all that from being pregnant.

Anyway, so we're staying in Hanoi's Old Quarter, which has a very New Orleans French Quarter feel about it, except the traffic which is crazy beyond anything I have ever seen before. It's mostly motorbikes, and they are fast and constant. There are very few traffic lights. To cross the street, you have to watch for a gap at your starting point; then you walk slowly across, through the traffic, which honks and swerves around you. You have to go slowly or else they can't swerve around you, and you have to watch because sometimes they can't swerve for other reasons. It was unnerving at first, but we've gotten used to it.

Also, I never noticed a lot of people grilling chicken feet in New Orleans. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough.

Yesterday, we spent most of the day doing routine sightseeing in Hanoi. First we hit the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum. In the grand manner of communist leaders, his body is preserved and on display in a giant gray monument. It was cold inside, but he looks pretty good considering. It was sort of a creepy deal, really--he had asked to be cremated, and I can fully see why. Who wants people gawking at you in perpetuity? Anyway, the neighboring Presidential Palace grounds is lovely. The French did a good job on that sucker--it was the home of the governor of Indochina, back in the day. Then Ho Chi Minh lived there, briefly, and opened the gardens to the public. Then he moved into successively smaller and simpler houses, though on the same grounds. They are all still there for viewing, along with his "war room", where he met with the army leaders during the wars to discuss strategy. It's just basically a screened-in porch with a big table and chairs inside.

The Ho Chi Minh museum is pretty interesting, if a bit pretentious. Instead of just presenting the relics related to his life and work, it makes everything into an artwork. So, for example, there is a big sculpture of a volcano representing the Vietnamese people getting ready to explode into revolution in 1945. It's history through abstract art. It's more than a little hard to follow unless you're really up on Vietnamese history and symbolism. One room has these huge pieces of plastic fruit; apparently, fruit represents youth and freshness and is intended to symbolize the younger Vietnamese generation who will lead the country into the future. Um, ok. Yeah, I got that from the banana.

Then we went to the Temple of Literature. This is a Confucian temple, one of the few left, built in the tenth century, and apparently still original. In 1010, it became essentially the first college, i.e., place of higher learning, in Vietnam. At that time, it seems Vietnam already had in place some kind of exams, and the boy with the highest exam score from each village was entitled to study at the Temple of Literature. This went on until the nineteenth century, when it was finally abandoned as a university. All the names of all the students are recorded on giant stone stelae, along with their village name, and these stelae rest on the backs of stone turtles. It seems the turtle is one of four sacred animals in Vietnam, the other three being the dragon, the phoenix, and what they call the "unicorn", though it's actually a lion of sorts. Interesting that, of the four sacred animals, the turtle is the only one known by science to actually exist. The turtle symbolizes longevity (which means the phoenix symbolizes...?).

Later in the evening, we went to the water puppets. I had been wondering "why water?" earlier, and they answered my question there. Because it looks cool. Just joking. I guess it's because when it started it was a form of entertainment during the flood season when the rice paddies were all flooded. That brings up a lot of other questions, like where did everyone sit? and was there Pabst Blue Ribbon available?, but what the heck. Anyway, at first, I thought it was going to be a long story, but it wasn't. It was a series of shorts, not really related. Most of them were apparently intended to be funny, and probably were if you could understand Vietnamese, and you could imagine a bunch of rice farmers and their kids really getting a kick out of these, at a time when there was no Cartoon Network. A few represented some kind of Vietnamese legend. In one, two phoenixes come out and do a mating dance, and then suddenly a big egg pops up from underwater, and then a short while later, the egg vanishes and a little baby phoenix comes out. One showed the rice planting process; another involved a man fishing for frogs (maybe that's where the French learned to eat frogs?); another involved two old people talking--the wife seems to be nagging him about something, and he keeps getting bit on the butt by some sort of clever fox-like creature. The music, which was live (the musicians sing some of the parts for the characters too), was awesome. Vietnamese bluegrass. Alright, it wasn't bluegrass, but it was kind of similar. For one thing, there is a banjo-esque instrument involved, and the rhythms were similar, as was the singing style, though not so nasal. I loved the music, and I was pretty impressed with how in synch the puppets and the musicians stayed. If you ever have a chance to see this water puppetry, I really recommend it.

Today we're just hanging out in Hanoi. It's a very street-oriented city, so we're just sort of milling about, shopping, drinking juices, and soaking up the atmosphere. Tonight, at about 8:30 or so, we're leaving to go up north, and from then on, we will be incommunicado for a few days. Expect us back in three or four days. We will be doing some trekking across rice paddy country, some boating, some ethnic-minority-market-going, and one night of homestay. It should be interesting, and we changed the schedule a bit to make it more appropriate for an easily-fatigued newly-pregnant gal like me. Teruaki is off right now buying us some good rain gear. And we will be with a very reputable guide service the whole time, so there is really no need to worry. We have super-strength mosquito repellent to boot--one thing I don't need right now is dengue fever.

Ah, to answer your question Uncle Mitch (and thanks, by the way!), you can expect our life to become much more "normal" like the rest of you family-oriented types now that we're having a family ourselves. I'm sure we'll still travel whenever we can, but not this way--no more poorly-planned crossings of China and so forth. We will undoubtedly bring our wee family to Southeast Asia whenever we can, but we will keep to much safer routes. I'm sure I'm going to be a worried mother, but I come by it honestly.

Anyway, time to go. There are souvenirs to be bought and tropical fruit juices to be drunk. But we are thinking of you all, and having a safe and happy time here. Much love and big kisses--

Julie

hello from hanoi

2004-07-31T04:07:00.000-07:00

I just spent an hour telling you the story of crossing China to get to Vietnam. The whole thing just got erased thanks to I don't know what. I'm not happy, and we have to go the water puppetry. Suffice it to say, for now, that we are in Hanoi. Man, when stuff just disappears like that into the ether, it really, really angers me.

Hopefully, the water puppets will calm me down. More about China--in a word, hell--and Hanoi--in a word, awesome, later sometime when I'm feeling up to braving the ether world where an hour's work can just suddenly disappear.

AAAAARRRRGH.

But, anyway, yeah, we're fine, healthy, doing A-OK. Love you all. Each and everyone of you.

halal in hong kong

2004-07-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

Alright, the first new item of business is Teruaki and I have arrived safely in Hong Kong--we actually arrived a couple of days ago, but I couldn't get to the Internet before now. Sorry about that. Hong Kong is crazy. There are people on the streets all night and day, many of them with luggage. We're staying in a seedy place in Tsim Sha Tsui, a seedy kind of district. I know when I picture Hong Kong, I picture Hong Kong Island, the glittering skyscrapers and business district and colonial remnants. Tsim Sha Tsui is in Kowloon, which is actually attached to the mainland, and it's China, or at least how I picture China--or at least how I picture Shanghai. Not to say that China is seedy, but, well, um, you get the idea. Actually, I had better rescind that implication about China because I am waiting for a Chinese visa, and they may be monitoring my blog for anything that would make me unworthy of visiting their noble country. Incidentally, Tsim Sha Tsui is where the infamous Chungking Mansions is--right next to the Mirador Mansions where we are staying.

So, we spent the better part of yesterday, our first day in Hong Kong, taking care of how to get to Vietnam. It isn't going to be easy. We're going overland through China--thus the need for the Chinese visa. I suspect this is going to be a real challenge, but maybe not. Maybe Chinese transportation systems are far more advanced than I think they are. We did also eat a lot. And we went antique shopping. Well, window shopping. We don't have that kind of money, but the stuff for sale was incredible. Stone statues of Buddha from 1000 years ago. Amazing.

This cybercafe here in seedy Tsim Sha Tsui is halal. That means that the chicken salad sandwich and coffee they are about to serve me are prepared and served in keeping with Islamic law. This is a first for me, and it's especially exciting to have my first halal food in a cyber cafe in Hong Kong. Last night was another first for me. We ate ribs at Tony Roma's. We had a hankering for big slabs of meat, and Tony Roma's is known for those, so we went. I've never eaten Tony Roma's before. It was pretty tasty though, I have to admit. So far as I know, however, it was not prepared in keeping with the laws of Allah.

The other big news, and this is really the biggest news because it is going to affect everything. I'm pregnant. I was intending to not tell anyone until we got back because I didn't want anyone to worry. Your first trimester is perhaps not the best time to travel, but I went to the doctor right before we left and it seems everything is going fine, and I even got to see the baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. We're very excited. But I'm also very, very tired all the time, and suffering intermittent bouts of nausea. So it is going to affect our itinerary. All the details of just how it is going to affect our itinerary have not yet been decided, but basically we can't do as much or see as much with me this tired. So, there are going to be necessary amendments so that I can get enough rest and so on. Frankly, as tired as I've been lately, the thought of doing a six-hour trek makes me want to roll over and die. Anyway, I don't want to worry anyone--I just wanted you to know.

Huh, halal chicken salad sandwiches taste just like heathen chicken salad sandwiches. Interesting.

Today we don't have much of a plan, but we are going to take the cruise to see the night view of Hong Kong Island later. Tony Roma's was expensive (about the same price as two nights at our dumpy hotel), so we have to stay on the cheap today. It's actually not that hard to eat cheaply in Hong Kong--you just have to know where to look. Tomorrow, we're going to go pick up my Chinese visa (Teruaki doesn't need one, being Japanese, although you might think it would be the other way around considering America has never actually invaded China, while Japan has), and then we're going to Macau for the day, and then we begin our exciting overland journey through southern China. Just call me Marco Polo.

I'll write again as soon as I can. Possibly tomorrow from Macau. I don't know about Internet cafes in China, but there are bunches of them in Hanoi apparently, so at the very least I will write again upon arrival in Hanoi.

I hope everyone is doing well. Thinking of you all, between dodging Indian (or Pakistani maybe) salesmen of fake Rolexes. Long live capitalism.

J.

P.S. I'm due in March, and I feel this is a girl. And, yes, that means I am not indulging in any delicious and cheap Tsingtao. Darn it.

Happy Sea Day!

2004-07-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's Sea Day (umi no hi, in Japanese) here in Japan. It's an official holiday, so I'm off work today. Teruaki is not. I'm just sort of hanging around the house, cleaning stuff so that when we get home from Vietnam the place will be all spic and span. I hate coming home from travel to a dirty house. Tomorrow, I have to go to work, but only for the ceremony ending the first trimester. Yes, it's very stupid; after a three-day weekend, all the students and teachers have to come to school just for an hour-long ceremony letting us know the first trimester is officially over. Why didn't they just do this on Friday? Who knows? No doubt it has something to do with official counts of how many days per year students are in school.

Yesterday it rained, so we did not go to the beach. Instead, we went and bought a very handy Vietnamese phrasebook and tried asking each other questions like, "Where's the bathroom?" and "Where can water puppetry be seen?" in what was no doubt horrifyingly bad Vietnamese. Vietnamese has a mind-boggling six tones, two of which don't simply rise or fall, but rise, fall, and rise again (or the other way around) on the same vowel. The phrasebook has a diagram of how all the tones should sound. It looks like a chart of someone's heartbeat. It all seems rather hopeless but we are game to try. I just hope we don't unwittingly insult someone; if we do, I suppose it wouldn't be the first time.

It's not hot today, but it is quite humid. The humidity sometimes reminds of me of being in Arkansas, eating a sandwich of fried baloney (slit at 3, 6, 9, and 12 o'clock and then pan-fried until crisp), American cheese, and iceberg lettuce while sipping sweet tea and wondering if dad was just going to stare at me like that all day. I keep wondering if maybe in Vietnam I can find out why he would stare at me like that.

Fried baloney...hmmm...

Peace.
Julie

a wee rant

2004-07-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Mom sent me a big box of paperbacks for my birthday--used, but plenty to keep me from going either mad from not reading enough or broke from buying my own books (used books in English are hard to find in Japan, and impossible to find in Ichinomiya, where I live).   Most of these are in the bestselling camp--serial killer mysteries, legal thrillers, law and order kind of stuff. She has decent taste in these kinds of books, so they are not bottom of the trough, and they do keep me from going mad.

I have noticed a trend in many of these books, especially the murder thrillers (as opposed to the courtroom ones). A really startling number of them have a female protagonist.   But she's never just any female. Obviously, she's beautiful. She's also deep and has good taste in certain things, but is a slob about certain others. Some of them are really into obscure blues musicians or abstract art but don't give a hoot about the clothes they're wearing, say, or how clean their apartment is. In most cases, whatever this particular gal's hip obsession is, the author will engage in serious name-dropping. It contributes absolutely nothing to the story to know that so-and-so is listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson while traveling to meet the suspect. It might if there were some connection, if the lyrics somehow pointed our heroine in the right direction, but instead it's just there for name-dropping. I think the authors erroneously believe that this constitutes character development; somehow, if we know what sorts of obscure blues (or abstract art or fancy cooking or whatever) this chick is into, then we will suddenly feel like she's a real person. It doesn't actually work though. I wonder how many people, besides myself, this sort of non-character-development annoys.

Furthermore, this woman is going to be bad and have a past. She won't talk about that past, though. Only weak and womanly women actually talk about their past. No, our lady to the rescue will keep hers a well-buried secret and many men will remark in the course of the story about how she keeps her poker face, how expressionless she is if the past comes up. She's single, too, and this is related to her need to escape from the past; usually that past secret has something to do with a man, anyway. Sometimes she has a lover or lovers, but she keeps them at arm's length, reversing the usual stereotype of men being the ones afraid of commitment.

I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone like this, and having never met anyone like this, it is getting difficult for me to find these ladies sympathetic. Cut the crap and get over whatever it was in your past already. Maybe it would help if they would talk about it. It bugs me that this has become the new standard character. It bugs me that this idea of what a 'strong woman' is has taken over, at least as much as one can judge from what's on the best-seller list.  But what is on the best-seller list is there because it is somehow speaking to enough people to sell. I don't know which worries me more--the fact that so many people are apparently ho-hum about the fact that these things all feature cookie-cutter characters and reasonably predictable plots [I knew who did it in this one, Monkeewrench, less than halfway through--I'm just finishing it to see how long it's going to take the tough lady programmer and the recently-divorced male cop to hook up/find the killer], or the fact that this type of character (dark, beautiful, gun-carrying woman with a love for Blind Dude and a terrible secret she won't talk about). Sure, I know 'normal' doesn't sell--nobody would read books about a so-so looking person with a normal marriage and no really traumatic, buried secrets. Or would they? Dang. I would, just for the relief.

Anyway, thanks, Mom. I actually am enjoying them, not so's you'd know it from this post. On a happier note, this is pretty much my last day of work before summer vacation. I have to go in on Tuesday, but just for a while, and there are no lessons. I am so ready for Vietnam.

J-dog, out

P.S. I am not going to proofread this one, so if you find a mistake, send me an email and I'll tell you where you can go. Thanks.

at least i am not in gaijin denial

2004-07-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

If one more Japanese person asks me if we eat rice in America--directly or indirectly--I am going to shove box after box of Rice-a-Roni down his throat. Yeah, sure, I guess I would forgive this if it were third graders asking me. Third graders don't ask me that, mainly I think because it never occurs to them that someone wouldn't eat rice. Today, it was the vice-principal of the school who asked me if we eat rice. This was followed up, after my reply in the affirmative, with questions about what kind of rice we eat and how we cook it. This forced me into a lengthy explanation of the fact that, well, we have fried rice and sushi and risotto (all of which are available in Japan) and so on, so the method of preparation really varies a lot. I really just wanted to eat my salad and tell them to shut the heck up (note how I'm keeping my language clean here for you, Mom).

Actually, the worst part of it is that it is not the first time I have had this discussion with the same group of people. In other words, they are asking me butt-ignorant questions and then not actually listening to the response, and then asking me the same butt-ignorant questions again. Why do they do this? Don't they listen? I suspect that it is simply that the force of their stereotypes overrides anything that any actual foreigner ever says.

To console myself on days like this--days when my lovely chef's salad is interrupted by questions like this--I like to go online to one of the many sites featuring other teachers of English living in Japan talking about their experiences. I prefer the intelligent analyses over the pure rants, though the rants can be fun, too. Today I was reading one of the former--the intelligent kind--that explains at length that, basically, foreigners will not be accepted here no matter how hard they try, and gives some reasons. The author says that foreigners (gaijin, though that mainly is used for white foreigners) often like to fool themselves into believing that if they learn to speak and read/write Japanese well and learn the culture and manners really well, then the Japanese will accept them; this, the author calls "gaijin denial", and it is a very real phenomenon.

I'm so sick of living here. It could be a really beautiful country, but the people here really need some help. You can't educate people who don't listen to a word you say; you can't gain respect from people who will only give it to you based on your skin color and passport. This is the most meaningless job I think I have ever had, which is not to say it is not sometimes enjoyable. At least when I worked as a waitress, people got fed.

And, yes, there are a lot of other gaijin here who would say, "Well, you (Julie) have only been here two and a half years, so you don't know the real Japan yet," or some such nonsense, as if time alone were enough for understanding. Yeah, well, someone else can deal with the "real Japan". At the end of this school year, assuming I don't lose it and assault someone with Rice-a-Roni before then, we (Teruaki and I) are so out of here. Can't wait. Just can't wait.

Hope all is well out there in TV-land.

Julie

P.S. Yes, I am also aware that there probably are people who would pay me to assault them with Rice-a-Roni or other edibles, and I am considering changing professions.